Principal Robotics Machine Learning Engineer (Robotics AI)

Location: Austin, TX, United States

Company

Human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered humanoid robots for manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, home, and other applications.

What you will do

• Implement and deploy state-of-the-art machine learning models for open-world object manipulation on physical robotic hardware.
• Design and drive the manipulation-learning data engine, including collection strategy, curation, annotation, and synthetic-to-real data workflows.
• Lead the development cycle from simulation prototyping through model transfer, fine-tuning, and deployment on the robot.
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks across computer vision, calibration, geometry, sensor fusion, models, and data, prioritizing fixes for production reliability.
• Set architectural standards, conduct code reviews, and mentor robotics engineers and future technical leaders.

Requirements

• 5+ years of deploying machine learning models on robotic systems in production.
• Expertise with CNNs, transformers, and VLAs.
• Proficiency in Python, C++, and PyTorch, with experience building real-time robotic software stacks.
• Experience with data collection, annotation, synthetic data generation, 6D pose estimation, camera calibration and extrinsics, point cloud processing, and visual servoing.
• Experience calibrating and tuning high-degree-of-freedom robotic manipulators and deploying algorithms on physical hardware.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, plus 7+ years of relevant experience or 5+ years with a PhD.

Nice to have

• Experience with distributed training and MLOps principles.
• Experience with VR or haptic teleoperation interfaces and retargeting algorithms.
• Experience with IsaacSim, MuJoCo, or Drake for policy training and validation.
• Experience automating dynamic real-world material handling with robotic manipulators.

Culture & Benefits

• Work at the intersection of applied AI, robotics research, and scalable production software.
• Operate with high ownership, fast feedback, and low bureaucracy.
• Work in an intense, focused, and sustainable startup environment.
• Direct-hire position with equal employment opportunity practices.