Eyebot is on a mission to make vision care accessible to everyone, equally.
Jack Moldave, Co-Founder & CEO, shares everything you need to know about their Engineering team!
In this Video
Jack discusses:
Company Overview of Eyebot
Eyebot is a Boston-area startup founded in 2021 by Jack Moldave and Matias. The company is on a mission to make vision care universally accessible and affordable by eliminating the typical scheduling and waiting hassles associated with obtaining an eye prescription.
Eyebot designs and manufactures fully automated, self-serve, and touch-free vision testing kiosks. These kiosks allow users to walk up, put their existing glasses in a tray, and complete a precise eye exam in approximately 90 seconds. The technology extracts the current prescription using a built-in lensometer while simultaneously measuring the new prescription via an auto-refractor that sends infrared light into the eye.
The company is scaling its deployments, with active kiosks placed in retail environments like Walmart and Sam’s Club. Eyebot is a small, builder-focused startup consisting of roughly 27 to 28 employees, with plans to significantly expand the team.
The Engineering Team Structure at Eyebot
The Eyebot engineering department operates as a lean, highly collaborative, and multidisciplinary group of about 12 people. The department is divided into a software team and a systems team, each consisting of four to five engineers.
Because the team operates in a nimble startup environment, roles are fluid and tightly integrated. While engineers spend the majority of their time on their primary technical specialties, they frequently collaborate across different domains. It is common for software engineers to help assemble physical kiosks or for mechanical engineers to write Python scripts for automation. This structure provides engineers with deep context regarding how their individual components fit into the complete physical and digital product.
Key Technical Challenges for Eyebot Engineers
The early phase of engineering at Eyebot focused on building the optical, mechanical, and software stack entirely from scratch. This involved a highly integrated combination of:
- Optics and optical engineering
- Embedded systems
- Mechanical design
- Robotics
- Computer vision for automated physical adjustments
As the company transitions from early-stage development to scaling hundreds of units in the field, the core technical challenge is moving systems from prototype level to highly robust, production-grade solutions. Key upcoming projects for new hires include:
- Overhauling the custom face-tracking systems to improve success rates from 80% to 99% across diverse user populations.
- Fundamentally redesigning existing hardware and software subsystems to make them highly scalable, reliable, and serviceable.
- Managing and monitoring fleets of physical kiosks deployed across nationwide retail locations.
The Eyebot Interview Process for Engineers
Eyebot utilizes an interview process designed to evaluate practical problem-solving and cultural alignment. The process consists of three main elements:
- Kiosk Demonstration: Candidates experience the kiosk firsthand as a user. This 90-second demo gives candidates immediate context on the product, the user experience, and the underlying technology, which serves as a foundation for the rest of the interview.
- Interactive Working Session: Candidates participate in a collaborative whiteboard session focused on a real technical challenge that the Eyebot engineering team has previously solved.
- Collaborative Assessment: Instead of completing take-home worksheets, candidates work directly with team members using physical components, cameras, or diagrams. This session evaluates how candidates think on their feet, receive feedback, and collaborate under real working conditions.
Why Boston Tech Job Seekers Join Eyebot
For engineers in the Boston technology ecosystem, Eyebot offers several distinct career advantages:
- High Impact and Fast Ship Cycles: Unlike larger legacy firms where engineering changes can take years to reach production, Eyebot has short feedback loops. Code pull requests and mechanical modifications are shipped to active retail environments within months.
- Direct Visibility of Work: Engineers can visit deployed kiosks in the field to watch actual customers interact with the hardware and software they personally designed.
- Unsolved Technical Frontiers: Many of the core hardware-software integration, computer vision, and robotics challenges are still being actively defined and solved, giving new hires significant influence over the technical roadmap.