Stefanie Pender

Getting robotics out of the lab and into production that holds up.

I'm VP of Operations at Trener Robotics, where I run operations and also help set strategy, shape our KPIs, and present to our board and enterprise customers. I came into technology leadership the long way: business administration at Cornell, design and fabrication at RISD, computer science at Georgia Tech, with robots and CNC machines throughout. My grandparents owned a machine shop, and I see them in a lot of the people I work with now.

Selected work

2021 – present

Now · Trener Robotics · 2025 – present

At Trener Robotics, a Series A company of about fifty, I work across the whole distance, from the multi-year roadmap and the board presentation down to the shop floor. I lead operations (deployment and field engineering, customer success, recruitment, supply chain, facilities, and logistics) with eight people reporting to me. I also help set strategy, define the KPIs we run the business on, present to our board and enterprise customers, and develop partnerships. My job is making sure what we commit to is what we deliver.

We're deploying into machine shops now, and we've run real production. That's the bar. Not a demo that photographs well, but new technology holding up where the work actually happens and moving something you can measure: throughput, efficiency, the job itself.

How I work

Speed and rigor trade off, and I try to be explicit about which one a decision needs. A pilot can move fast. A production commitment to a customer can't be walked back.

I sit between engineering and customers on purpose. Commitments to customers get tested against what the field team can actually deliver, and what we learn on shop floors goes straight back into the roadmap.

Years of moving research into the field taught me that the move itself is the hardest part. A robot in an isolated lab is a proof point. A robot working in the field, as part of a broader system, is where it gets validated and where it starts making a real difference in production.

Past · Autodesk Research · 2017 – 2025

I spent eight years at Autodesk Research bridging robotics research into product, working on Adaptive Robotic Assembly at the Technology Centers in San Francisco and Boston. I wanted to be closer to the customer, on shop floors, which is what took me to Trener. What follows is a selection from those years.

Autonomous Robotic Assembly of a Skateboard Truck. Video by Autodesk Research.