Founding Research Engineer, Robot Learning
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 21, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 21, 2026.
About the Role
A physical AI data infrastructure company is hiring its first robot learning engineer to evaluate how synthetic training data affects robot policy performance. You will work with engineering and product teams, reporting to the R&D leader, and help turn research results into product requirements while building a robotics team in the Bay Area.
What You'll Do
Train and fine-tune robot policies using synthetic data in simulation, focusing on manipulation and grasping.
Establish baselines on public evaluation suites and compare results using consistent seeds, checkpoints, and protocols.
Analyze what improves and what does not, then translate findings into data-generation requirements for fidelity and variation.
Publish and demonstrate results to the robotics community and contribute to customer technical discussions.
Start as an individual contributor and hire and lead the robotics team as it grows.
What We're Looking For
Six or more years of hands-on robot learning experience, including industry and university research lab work.
A master's or PhD in robotics, machine learning, or a related field.
Experience training and evaluating robot policies in simulation with Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or equivalent tools.
Practical experience with policy learning methods such as VLA fine-tuning, imitation learning, diffusion policies, behavior cloning, ACT, or reinforcement learning.
Experience with manipulation or grasping policies; navigation policy experience is also relevant.
Strong Python and PyTorch skills and familiarity with simulation and robotics tools such as NVIDIA Isaac and USD.
Experience using evaluation results to guide data or simulation changes, including controlled comparisons that vary training data while keeping other conditions consistent.
Robotics or simulation product experience beyond general software or data engineering, with a focus beyond hardware, sensors, or electrical work.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary is $260,000 to $300,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available; candidates must be authorized to work without sponsorship.
Location
Hybrid role based in San Francisco, California.