Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Robotics and Physical AI
About the Role
This is a hands-on research and engineering role at a small, early-stage AI training data company focused on physical AI and robotics. You will work across the full stack, from learning algorithms and simulation to real-world robot deployment, helping push the frontier of how robots perceive, plan, and act in the physical world.
What You'll Do
Develop learning systems for robots, including policies, world models, and vision-language-action models.
Build and maintain simulation environments and evaluation frameworks for robotic tasks.
Apply and advance computer vision and perception algorithms for autonomous robots.
Build pipelines connecting simulation and real-world robot deployment, covering real-to-sim and sim-to-real workflows.
Work directly with robot hardware, sensors, actuators, and embedded systems to prototype and validate capabilities.
Train and evaluate reinforcement-learning and imitation-learning systems for manipulation, locomotion, or mobile platforms.
Integrate and experiment with robot platforms to test algorithms in the physical world.
Create tools and infrastructure that accelerate robotics research and development.
Collaborate with external robotics companies and research labs on technical problems.
What We're Looking For
Demonstrated research or engineering experience in robotics and AI, beyond academic experiments alone. New graduates with strong robotics backgrounds are welcome.
Strong software skills in both C++ and Python.
Practical experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, and computer vision.
Hands-on experience with real-to-sim or sim-to-real robotics workflows.
Familiarity with simulation platforms such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, MJX, or Genesis.
Experience working with robotics hardware, sensors, embedded systems, and 3D modeling tools.
Comfort moving fluidly across research, engineering, experimentation, and product development with end-to-end ownership.
Exposure to modern multimodal AI approaches, such as transformers, diffusion models, world models, vision-language-action models, LLMs, or AI agents, is a plus.
An individual contributor mindset with motivation to ship in a small, collaborative team.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $100,000 to $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available; candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California. This role is not remote.