Field Operations Technician (Tri-Cities, WA) - Orchard Robotics

Orchards in the U.S. produce $35B of fruit every year, but fruit farmers are losing 30-50% of their potential crop because they lack data needed to manage crops precisely.

About Us:

Orchard Robotics is a seed-stage startup backed by top VCs like General Catalyst, Contrary, Soma Capital, Humba Ventures, and angel investors like Howard Lerman (founder of Yext).

We’re building Robots & AI that enable precision crop management. Our AI-powered camera systems count, size, and measure the growth of every fruit on 1,000,000+ trees in an orchard. Our mission is to help farmers to produce more food for the world, much more efficiently. Our team is close-knit & highly driven, and we’re deeply motivated by the impact we’re making – every new system deployed, and every new tree analyzed means one less fruit that goes to waste, and one more person who is fed.

Farmers are using our technology today in some of the largest orchards in the nation.

About the role: 

Love tech? Enjoy working outdoors? This could be the job for you!

As a Field Operations Technician, you'll be working directly with our engineering team, as well as our customers, to deploy, test, and validate the FruitScope Camera, our cutting-edge AI-powered Camera System that analyzes the quality and yield of fruit in orchards.

We'll teach you all about our AI-powered camera system, so you can help our farmers get it up and running in their farms. This job is a mix of high-tech and agriculture, as you'll be working with advanced technology right in the middle of apple orchards!

Day to day, you'll be in the fields with farmers, helping them set up, operate, and implement the FruitScope Camera system to collect data about how their crops are growing. You'll then use that information to help them get the most out of their orchards, by using the data to optimize the growth of fruit on their trees. You'll also show potential customers how the system works and explain the benefits it can bring to their farms.

Your work with our farmers will be critical to ensuring top performance of our camera systems, while listening to our customers and relaying important results, feedback, and ideas as we grow and continue to develop our technology.

But your work won't stop in the field. We'll need your eyes and ears to tell our tech and engineering team what's going on. You'll help them understand what's working and what needs improving in our system, making your role incredibly important in shaping our future, and the future of fruit farming!

We value candidates from all different backgrounds, as agriculture is a something that impacts each and every one of us. If you're a hard worker who's excited about bringing together AI, technology, and farming, we're interested in you. We value diverse perspectives, experiences and knowledge, as these are things we that only serve to make our team stronger. If you're looking to help make a positive impact in the world by transforming the future of agriculture, come join us. Even if you may not meet every requirement, we'd strongly encourage you apply.

Note: this is a full-time, salaried, seasonal job position, for 9 months of the year during the apple growing season.

This job also comes with Comprehensive Health, Vision, and Dental coverage, and the company pays 80% of the premium.

What you’ll do:

• Drive out to our customers' orchards 3-4 times per week, while spending the rest of the week working from home
• Use our FruitScope Camera system to set up trials, run field tests, and collect "ground truth" data all about fruit and trees in our customers' orchards, all throughout the growing season
• Work with our technical team to go over results, debug any challenges that might arise, and figure out how to make our products even better
• Use your in-field expertise to annotate data collected by the camera system to help our machine learning algorithms learn more about the fruit that it sees
• Be our go-to person for questions about our customers' orchards and their progress
• Show off the FruitScope Camera systems to new, potential customers at their orchards
• Work directly with our customers to communicate new developments, resolve issues, listen to feedback, and come up with new ideas on how to further improve our technology

What makes you a good fit:

• Being a self-starter with the ability to self-supervise
• Excellent communication skills to document & relay what you see in the field to our customers and engineering team
• Great people skills to interface with our customers day-to-day, answering any questions and helping solve any challenges they might face
• Hands-on experience working with technology
• Patient, thoughtful, and detail-oriented when operating our FruitScope Camera System in the fields
• Knowledge of how to use Google Docs, Excel, and digital applications like Slack, Jira, etc.
• Ability to learn quickly and operate in a dynamic environment
• Enthusiasm for taking on multiple roles and responsibilities as our company grows
• Familiarity with an agricultural / farming environment is a plus
• Prior experience in horticulture, a field-based research program, or other agricultural fields
• Reliable, on-time, and occasionally able to work irregular hours, to keep up with farmers' schedules
• You have a valid drivers license and a vehicle you can drive to the orchards
• You are able to lift 20 lbs to set up our camera systems, drive a UTV around the orchards, and complete a variety of field tasks such as gathering ground truth data by measuring counts and sizes of fruit on trees
• High School Diploma required, and a Bachelor's Degree is preferred

Above all, we value candidates who aren’t afraid to tackle real-world challenges head-on, and are ready to make a truly positive impact on the biggest industry in the world (agriculture).

Come join us in helping foster a more fruitful future!