{"id":1245492,"url":"https://alion.io/job/intelligence-factory-founding-engineer-manipulation","title":"Founding Engineer: Manipulation","company":{"id":3779945,"name":"Intelligence Factory","domain":"intelligence-factory.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/intelligence-factory","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Work at a Startup","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":80000,"max":200000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":200000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Imitation Learning","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-25T17:27:29Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-25","last_verified_at":"2026-09-28T01:21:32Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"We're building foundation models for deploying general-purpose manipulation robots.\nOur data infrastructure generates rich, multi-modal human demonstration data at exponential scale. We use it to train manipulation models that work reliably across tasks, objects, and robot embodiments. We are live in deployment across multiple verticals.\nThe robotics industry is focused on building bigger, more generalizable pre-trained models, but a robot has no commercial value unless it works 99% of the time. Our research is focused on bridging the gap between 40% to 99% in real world deployments.\nAs founding engineer, you'll own the model pipeline end-to-end. You'll have $750K in compute credits across Azure, AWS, and GCP, NVIDIA Inception perks, and a bespoke data pipeline already running.\nWhat you'll do:\nOwn the train-test-deploy loop: curation, training runs, evaluation, deployment\nSelect and tune architectures for our foundation model\nCollaborate with research organizations\nSet technical direction for the model team\nYou should have:\nExperience implementing models end-to-end on robots, or research experience in VLAs, world models, or imitation learning\nProof of decision-making with incomplete information\nExtremely competitive nature\nNo aversion to unglamorous work, in robotics, research and debugging have to go hand-in-hand\nA track record that shows you genuinely want to see robots deployed in the real world, projects, research, or competitions\nOur culture is built on honesty and a willingness to fail fast. If you see yourself fitting here, please apply.\nComp:\n$80K-$200K\n0.1%-2% equity\nIncredible office in NYC. Equipment budget, meals, etc.","description_format":"text","description_chars":1658,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Edge AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T17:27:29Z"}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":40,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-09-27T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":200000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/intelligence-factory-founding-engineer-manipulation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/intelligence-factory-founding-engineer-manipulation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-28T05:30:36Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3734,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":1266,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-09-29T00:00:00Z"}}}