Staff AI Engineer

Arm is building the foundational platform software for the next generation of Physical AI systems on Arm: software that lets AI applications and agents perceive, reason and act through real devices, reliably and on-device, across robotics, industrial automation and the smart home. The work sits at the intersection of distributed systems, edge computing and AI infrastructure.

This is a rare opportunity to join a new team in Seattle and build new products and reference implementations that enable developers to put the latest Arm technology to work in their solutions.

Job Overview:

Building intelligent systems that interact with the physical world requires bringing together AI models, diverse hardware, and software frameworks across the cloud and edge. Developers need simpler ways to connect these technologies, orchestrate complex workflows, and build reliable applications that can operate across different devices and environments.

Our team is building the open-source foundations and developer tools to make Physical AI more accessible, scalable, and reliable. We are working to simplify how AI agents interact with physical devices, coordinate tasks, and operate across heterogeneous hardware environments. By bringing together AI, hardware, and developer ecosystems, we aim to make building and deploying real-world agentic applications as seamless as building software today.

As a Staff AI Engineer, you will develop the tools and technologies that bring this vision to life. You will design and build SDKs, frameworks, and reference applications that enable AI agents to interact with physical devices, orchestrate complex workflows, and operate across cloud and edge environments. You will integrate modern AI models, inference runtimes, and agent frameworks to create end-to-end applications, while developing evaluation methodologies to measure their reliability, performance, and effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

You will work hands-on with real physical hardware, and edge computing platforms, collaborating with engineers, product teams, and industry partners to shape the future of Physical AI on Arm.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement features in our SDKs and reference services, on both the device side and the agent side

• Build reference applications and demos that connect agents to real devices across edge and cloud, using PyTorch-ecosystem inference runtimes and popular agent frameworks

• Develop evaluation harnesses that measure the reliability, latency and correctness of agent-to-device interactions, and use the results to improve the product

• Bring up and maintain a fleet of development hardware (single-board computers, cameras, sensors, robot platforms, edge servers) used for development, testing and demonstrations

• Contribute to the security and operational posture of the platform: identity, authorization, observability and safe failure behavior

• Write clear documentation, samples and learning material for external developers, and support the open-source community through issues, reviews and contributions

• Collaborate with architects, product managers and partner engineers on requirements, API design and release quality

Required Skills and Experience:

• Professional software engineering experience building distributed systems, with strong Python and working proficiency in at least one of C++, Rust or Go

• Experience building and shipping AI-powered applications, including LLM tool use or agent frameworks, and integrating them with real systems

• Practical experience deploying ML models for inference, on servers or on edge devices, with PyTorch or a comparable framework

• Solid grounding in messaging, RPC, concurrency, failure handling and testing of networked software

• Comfortable with Linux, embedded single-board computers, containers and CI/CD workflows

• Clear written and verbal communication, and the ability to work across hardware, systems and ML disciplines

• Degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics or a related field

'Nice to Have' Skills and Experience:

• Experience with publish/subscribe messaging systems or IoT protocols

• Familiarity with the Model Context Protocol or similar agent-tool interfaces

• Robotics or physical-AI background: ROS 2, robot arms, perception pipelines, or control loops

• On-device inference experience with ExecuTorch, ONNX Runtime or vendor NPU toolchains, and LLM serving with vLLM or similar

• Experience designing evaluations or benchmarks for AI agents

• Contributions to open-source projects and experience supporting an external developer community

• Security fundamentals for connected devices

In Return:

You will take on important technical challenges in AI and platform engineering on a growing team in Seattle, and contribute to core platform capabilities that external developers use from day one. Your work will be open source and put to work in real deployments with our partners. We value thoughtful engineering, collaboration and continuous learning, and you will have a direct say in what the product becomes.

Additional Information:

Please note that no relocation package is available for this role.

Salary Range:

We value people as individuals and our dedication is to reward people competitively and equitably for the work they do and the skills and experience they bring to Arm. Salary is only one component of Arm's offering. The total reward package will be shared with candidates during the recruitment and selection process.

Our 10x Mindset

At Arm, we believe progress happens when people are empowered to think bigger and push beyond what seems possible. Our 10x mindset is about curiosity, ambition and creating impact that will be used by millions. We learn fast, prioritise collaboration and turn bold ideas into real technology. We look for people who are inspired by this way of working and want to grow in an environment where bold ideas are welcomed. Discover how the 10x mindset shapes life at Arm: https://careers.arm.com/10x-mindset

Use of AI in Your Application

At Arm, we embrace the benefits AI can bring, including in recruitment. You may use AI to support your preparation, such as improving the clarity of written responses, practicing interview questions, or learning more about our industry. However, your application and interview responses must reflect your own thinking, experience, and abilities. We want to understand your authentic perspective, creativity, and approach to problem solving. As such, you may not use AI to complete assigned tasks as part of any assessments. If you plan to use AI-supported or assistive technologies as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact [email protected] so we can support you.

Recruitment Adjustments and Accommodations

At Arm, we want to build extraordinary teams. If you need an adjustment or an accommodation during the recruitment process, please email [email protected]. To note, by sending us the requested information, you consent to its use by Arm to arrange for appropriate accommodations. All accommodation or adjustment requests will be treated with confidentiality, and information concerning these requests will only be disclosed as necessary to provide the accommodation. Although this is not an exhaustive list, examples of support include breaks between interviews, having documents read aloud, or office accessibility. Please email us about anything we can do to accommodate you during the recruitment process.

Hybrid Working

Arm’s approach to hybrid working is designed to create a working environment that supports both high performance and personal wellbeing. We believe in bringing people together face to face to enable us to work at pace, whilst recognizing the value of flexibility. Within that framework, we empower groups/teams to determine their own hybrid working patterns, depending on the work and the team’s needs. Details of what this means for each role will be shared upon application. In some cases, the flexibility we can offer is limited by local legal, regulatory, tax, or other considerations, and where this is the case, we will collaborate with you to find the best solution. Please talk to us to find out more about what this could look like for you.

Equal Opportunities

Arm is an equal opportunity employer, committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal opportunities are available to all applicants and colleagues. We are a diverse organization of dedicated and innovative individuals, and don’t discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.