{"id":765936,"url":"https://alion.io/job/metamorphic-ml-research-scientist-embodied-ai-reinforcement-learning","title":"ML Research Scientist (Embodied AI & Reinforcement Learning)","company":{"id":679134,"name":"METAMORPHIC","domain":"metamorphic.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/metamorphic-2","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":9,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":175000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Embodied AI","optional":false},{"name":"Imitation Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":true},{"name":"Sim-to-Real","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-03T23:40:04Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-03","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T07:31:53Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":112,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":112},"description":"About Metamorphic\nMetamorphic is developing new approaches to intelligence by combining machine learning with large-scale experimental neuroscience, informed by the principles that make the brain efficient, flexible, and robust. We are building foundation models trained on rich, continuous neural data - a high-resolution model of the brain at a scale never before possible.\nOur founding team spans machine learning, neuroscience, and neurotechnology, with prior work including the MICrONS project, Neuropixels, and the Enigma project, as well as foundational scientific contributions in AI, neural computation, and embodied intelligence. Our work sits at the frontier of AI research, and we believe the highest-impact discoveries will come from researchers and engineers working as a single, tightly collaborative team.\nThe name Metamorphic reflects our belief that the next advances in intelligence will come from a change in form, beyond scale - from artificial to natural intelligence.\nAbout the Role\nWe are hiring a Research Scientist to advance the learning algorithms and models that drive our neuro-aligned embodied agents. You will design, train, and evaluate the methods that connect our foundation models to physical systems, working across areas such as world models, action models, reinforcement learning, and learning from demonstration. A central part of your work will be exploring how principles drawn from our neuroscience research can shape better representations, dynamics, and behaviors in embodied agents.\nUnlike most labs working in this space, Metamorphic approaches embodied intelligence from the joint perspective of machine learning and large-scale neuroscience. This interdisciplinary research paradigm unlocks a new path towards safe AGI, and you will have substantial input into it. You will own end-to-end significant pieces of the research agenda from problem formulation through experimentation, scaling, and evaluation in both simulation and the real world. You will work closely with researchers and engineers across the team, with substantial autonomy over how methods and infrastructure evolve as the work scales.\nYou'll thrive in this role if you:\nAre excited about working in a fast-paced, production-focused research lab that often requires moving between algorithmic research, large-scale experimentation, and hands-on work in the same week\n\nHave strong research taste and engineering instincts, and can move quickly between writing, shipping experiments, and rigorous evaluation\n\nAre comfortable owning a research direction end-to-end - formulating the problem, designing experiments, running them at scale, and interpreting results carefully\n\nEnjoy pair programming and deeply collaborative work, including hands-on time with researchers and engineers across disciplines\n\nAre eager to engage seriously with neuroscience and to let biological principles shape the algorithms you build, rather than treating them as decoration\n\nAre enthusiastic to work at an organization that functions as a single, cohesive team pursuing large-scale AI research\n\nHave ambitious goals for AI progress and are excited to create the best outcomes over the long term\n\nWe offer:\nThe chance to work on one of the most scientifically consequential AI projects being pursued today\n\nA small, world-class team where your contributions directly shape the science and the company\n\nCompetitive compensation and benefits, along with visa sponsorship\n\nStrong mentorship and career development\n\nSalary Range\n$175,000 - $250,000 USD\nBased on experience. We additionally offer a competitive equity package and comprehensive benefits, as well as visa sponsorship for international candidates.\nMinimum Qualifications\nPhD in Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Science, Computational Neuroscience, or a related field - or equivalent research experience demonstrated through publications and shipped systems\n\nStrong publication record or technical track record in one or more of: reinforcement learning, world models, action models, imitation learning, or embodied AI\n\nDeep working knowledge of modern deep learning, including large-scale training, distributed optimization, and rigorous evaluation methodology\n\nStrong software engineering skills and strong working proficiency in Python and a modern deep learning framework; ability to write training and evaluation infrastructure that other researchers can build on\n\nHands-on experience training and evaluating policies in simulation\n\nComfort collaborating closely with engineers and researchers to deploy and evaluate methods in real-world settings, and to iterate across models, environments, and hardware\n\nScientific rigor in experimental design, ablations, and interpretation of results\n\nNice to Have\nExperience designing or extending world models, action models, or related architectures for embodied agents\n\nExperience deploying learned policies on real robotic systems, including bimanual or humanoid platforms\n\nExperience with sim-to-real transfer and co-training across simulated and real data\n\nBackground in computational or systems neuroscience - neural population analysis, motor control, sensorimotor learning, or biologically-plausible learning rules\n\nExperience using neural data to constrain or evaluate machine learning models\n\nFamiliarity with multimodal foundation models and large-scale pretraining\n\nExperience with planning, model-predictive control, or hybrid learning-and-planning approaches\n\nInterest in the relationship between biological and artificial intelligence, and an appetite for cross-disciplinary work\n\nWe encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. If you don't see a role that fits, we encourage you to submit a general application and tell us how you'd like to contribute to our mission.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5826,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T19:59:26Z"}],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.269,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":112,"expected_fill_days":43,"reasons":["conf:7","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/metamorphic-ml-research-scientist-embodied-ai-reinforcement-learning","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/metamorphic-ml-research-scientist-embodied-ai-reinforcement-learning.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-24T10:34:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers"}}