{"id":175976,"url":"https://alion.io/job/persona-ai-deep-learning-robot-manipulation-engineer","title":"Deep Learning - Robot Manipulation Engineer","company":{"id":63117,"name":"Persona AI","domain":"persona.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/persona-ai","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":8,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":38,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Houston, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":104000,"max_usd":203000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":99},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Teleoperation","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"Vision-Language-Action","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-14T14:53:54Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-14","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T04:07:43Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":95,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":95},"description":"Job Title: Deep Learning - Robot Manipulation Engineer\nDepartment: Machine Learning\nReports To: Head of Machine Learning\nEmployment Type: Full-Time\nLocation: Houston, TX\nTravel: 10%\nWho We Are\nPersona AI is building humanoid robots for the most demanding environments in heavy industry - shipyards, steel mills, fabrication facilities, and offshore platforms - performing welding, grinding, maintenance, inspection, and material-handling work that is dangerous, physically demanding, and increasingly difficult to staff.\nWe are backed by leading strategic and financial investors and engaged with global industrial leaders across Korea, Japan, the United States, and Singapore. Korea is the center of gravity for our early commercial strategy, anchored by relationships with the world’s leading shipbuilders and steelmakers. Our work spans both the robot platform itself and the systems, partners, and playbooks required to deploy it at scale.\nWhy Join Persona AI?\nWe offer competitive compensation, a performance-based bonus, 99% employer covered medical benefits, early-stage equity, competitive PTO, and a company-wide paid winter break between December 24th and January 2nd.\n\nYou’ll shape technology that’s redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.\n\nWork alongside passionate teammates who value creativity, and continuous learning.\n\nAbout the Role\nWe're looking for aDeep Learning Manipulation Engineer to help train Persona AI robots to do real work in real world environments. We're looking for exceptional people who dream big, thrive on challenges, and love seeing their efforts come to life. We are primarily interested in candidates who have developed and released products to the market, but can be flexible depending on aptitude and energy.\nAs one of the inaugural Deep Learning Manipulation Engineers at Persona, you will have an incredible opportunity to get in at the beginning to shape the design and development of Persona’s deep learning and manipulation strategy and infrastructure. If you're passionate about cutting-edge technology and want to be part of a world-class team we'd love to hear from you.\nWhat You Will Be Doing\nDesign and implement advanced deep learning models and training procedures to achieve dexterous manipulation for humanoid robots with high DOF and multi-fingered hands.\n\nTrain models, using curriculum learning strategies, to progress from simple object interactions to precise grasping, long-horizon tasks, tool-use, and in-hand object manipulation.\n\nIncorporate tactile sensing and proprioception into end-to-end learning pipelines, enabling robust closed-loop policies.\n\nWork with the teleoperation and data team to design data collection and versioning strategies.\n\nLeverage existing state-of-the-art manipulation models and contribute to the development of new architectures for emerging complex tasks.\n\nDeploy trained manipulation models to robotic hardware, ensuring real-time performance, safety, and integration with control systems and sensors.\n\nCollaboratively develop and optimize the manipulation ML pipeline.\n\nKeep up to date with the state of the art in research and development.\n\nDevelop and execute evaluation pipelines to rigorously test learned manipulation models, including real-world trials and simulation, measuring performance, robustness, and generalization across tasks and environments.\n\nCollaborate in attracting, nurturing and growing the machine learning and autonomy teams.\n\nWhat We Are Looking For:\nCourage and grit to tackle some of the hardest problems in robot manipulation.\n\nEnthusiasm for working collaboratively in fast paced ambiguous environments.\n\nMasters or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field.\n\n3+ years of experience in applying deep learning to robotic manipulation.\n\nStrong understanding and proficiency with state of the art algorithms and best-practices in behavior cloning, vision-language-action models, diffusion policies, foundation models, etc.\n\nExperience with cloud computing and large-scale datasets.\n\nUnderstanding of the challenges of deploying neural network models in the real world.\n\nCapable of writing high quality software.\n\nStrong first principles thinker.\n\nBonus Skills:\nExperience with other aspects of ML applied to robotics, including computer vision algorithms, sensors, point clouds, segmentation and object detection.\n\nPublished papers at top ML/Robotics conferences (ICML, ICRA, CoRL, RSS, NeurIPS).\n\nHave deployed robots, collected large amounts of data, and trained large neural networks that work in production environments.\n\nPersona AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer.\n All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local 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