{"id":117931,"url":"https://alion.io/job/rivr-senior-ai-engineer-vla-foundation-model","title":"Senior AI Engineer - VLA Foundation Model","company":{"id":27772,"name":"RIVR","domain":"rivr.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/rivr","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":89,"open_postings":21,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.238,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":211,"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Zurich, Switzerland"],"countries":["CH"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":119000,"max_usd":306000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":2102},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Diffusion Models","optional":false},{"name":"Imitation Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch C++","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Supervised Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Transformers","optional":false},{"name":"Vision-Language-Action","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":true}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2025-11-05T12:16:15Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-19T12:52:40Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-10-19T12:52:40Z","days_open":348,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":347},"description":"Job Description\nOur fleet of delivery robots operates globally today, generating vast amounts of robotic real-world data. By utilizing state-of-the-art Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, large-scale generalist models (like Transformers), generative AI, and similar methods, we can leverage this pool of data to significantly enhance its autonomy, navigation, and manipulation skills. In this role, you will develop multi-modal models that enable robots to autonomously generate actions from demonstrations, real-time sensor data, and natural language commands. We are seeking an expert in VLA models, imitation learning, and generative AI techniques with a deep knowledge of supervised, and self-supervised learning algorithms. If you are passionate about pushing the boundaries of AI we invite you to join us in shaping the future of intelligent robotics.\nWhat you’ll be doing\nDevelop and implement cutting-edge Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, generalist robot transformers, and imitation learning algorithms (e.g., diffusion policies) to enable robots to autonomously execute complex tasks.\nDesign, test, and refine your algorithms to meet the demands of complex real-world autonomy and navigation tasks, with a focus on spatial reasoning and generalization.\nStreamline the data collection and training workflow to efficiently expand model capabilities with new tasks and data sources.\nCollaborate with the reinforcement learning team to innovate methods that leverage both simulated and real-world data.\nOptimize and distill networks for real-time deployment on the edge (e.g. Nvidia Jetson Thor).\nBuild, lead and mentor an exceptional team of software engineers.\nProvide expert guidance to product managers and executives for strategic decision-making.\nCreate and maintain documentation, guidelines, and best practices to streamline knowledge sharing.\nWhat you must have\nMaster’s degree or higher in a relevant field such as Engineering, Robotics, or Machine Learning.\nA minimum of three years of industry or research experience, with PhD experience applicable.\nStrong deep learning fundamentals including supervised learning, self-supervised learning, Transformer-based architectures, policy optimization algorithms, imitation learning, and generative AI techniques (including Diffusion Models).\nProven experience in developing Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models or large-scale generalist robot models (e.g., RT-2, Octo, etc.).\nStrong background in robotics including autonomy, navigation.\nExperience with deploying artificial neural networks on hardware platforms.\nAbility to prototype algorithms and train deep neural networks in Python (Pytorch)\nGet some bonus points\nPhD degree in Robotics, Engineering, Computer Science, Machine Learning or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of research experience.\nPublications at top-tier conferences.\nExperience in managing a software team.\nAbility to write production-level code in modern C++","description_format":"text","description_chars":2959,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotics AI","Logistics & Warehouse 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