Roger

Despite the clear dark humor in this scenario, I can see how this situation raises a lot of concerns about software engineering ethics. Part of the responsibility of a software engineer is to protect the safety of the public and the end-user, and there was definitely a failure on many levels to result in the death of a robot operator.
It’s often the knee-jerk reaction to search for and indict someone - anyone! - in the face of highly public tragedies, but it would be a failure of justice to assume that one single software engineer was responsible for the death of the operator. However, the ethical failures occurred on many levels - things should have been caught at the testing phase, the training phase, and there definitely was not a culture of responsible software engineering at the company.

The ethical violations are definitely in the gray area though. There was no intent to hurt the public by cutting corners; there were errors and contingencies planned. The speed of the development was in the interest of the programmer’s employer, even though it was eventually sloppy - perhaps an error of judgement, but certainly not an egregious error by itself.
IANAL, but it sounds like the manslaughter court case wouldn’t have a chance.