Location: Bay Area, CA / On-site
About the role
Our client is an early-stage humanoid robotics company in the Bay Area. It’s building multimodal foundation models for physical robots, focused on how robots reason, learn, and act in the real world. The company is hiring AI Researchers to help develop these models and take them from early ideas through to deployment on real hardware.
The research spans world models, multimodal foundation models, robot learning, imitation learning, and vision-language-action models (VLAs), built on a foundation of deep learning and generative modeling. Work in this area typically involves transformer and diffusion-based architectures, large-scale training in frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX, and learning from demonstration and teleoperation data. Closing the gap between simulation and the real world is also a common challenge.
A key part of the role is seeing research through to the physical world. You’ll be expected to move ideas from concept to real-world deployment on robots, not just publish them.
Direct robotics experience is ideal but not essential. Strong researchers from adjacent fields who understand where robotics research is heading are also encouraged to apply.
Main responsibilities
- Research and develop multimodal foundation models for physical robots
- Work on world models and how robots reason, learn, and act in the real world
- Develop approaches in robot learning, imitation learning, or VLAs
- Apply deep learning and generative modeling techniques to robotics problems
- Take research from new ideas through to real-world deployment
Requirements
- Experience with world models or multimodal foundation models
- Experience in robot learning, imitation learning, or VLAs
- Strong background in deep learning and generative models
- Experience taking research from new ideas through to real-world deployment
- Strong research record at top conferences
- PhD-level research ability
Nice to have:
- Direct robotics experience
- Senior-level research experience
The offer
- On-site in the Bay Area, CA
- The chance to shape core research at an early-stage humanoid robotics company
- Research that’s deployed on physical robots
This role suits a researcher who wants their work running on real humanoid robots, not just in papers. If you’re working on something relevant, apply below.