Research Engineer / Research Scientist — Robotics & Physical AI
About the Role
This role sits at the intersection of research and engineering on a small, collaborative team building AI-driven systems that help robots learn, reason, and operate in the physical world. You'll work across learning algorithms, simulation, and hardware - pushing robot capabilities from simulation into real-world deployment and shaping how robots perceive, plan, and act.
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.
Construct pipelines connecting simulation and real-world robot deployment (real-to-sim and sim-to-real).
Work with robot hardware, sensors, actuators, and embedded systems to prototype and test capabilities.
Train and evaluate reinforcement-learning and imitation-learning systems for manipulation, locomotion, or mobile platforms.
Integrate and experiment with robot platforms to validate 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
Any experience level welcome - new graduates through senior researchers and engineers are encouraged to apply.
Strong software skills in C++ and Python.
Hands-on experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, and computer vision.
Experience developing and maintaining robotics simulation environments (e.g., Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, MJX, Genesis) and real-to-sim/sim-to-real workflows.
Practical experience with robot hardware, sensors, actuators, CAD/Blender, and embedded systems.
Familiarity with modern ML tools - LLMs, Transformers, multimodal AI, diffusion models, or AI agents - is a plus.
Comfortable moving fluidly between research, engineering, experimentation, and product development.
Must be authorized to work in the US; visa sponsorship is not available.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $100,000 - $300,000 USD annually, depending on experience. Equity participation is expected at this stage. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA. This role is not eligible for remote work.