Staff/Sr. Staff, Physical AI Researcher

Location: Hybrid, based at the Emerging Tech Lab in Santa Clara, California, United States.

Recruiting range: $200,000–$350,000 USD annually, dependent on experience and level.

Company

Technology company developing consumer, vehicle, media, home appliance, and robotics solutions, with an Emerging Technology Lab focused on advanced research and strategic technology partnerships.

What you will do

• Set the technical direction for the Physical AI team and lead advanced research in multimodal robot foundation models and physical intelligence.
• Lead collaborations with headquarters and third-party research labs to integrate advanced robotics technologies into the broader ecosystem.
• Build a cross-functional Physical AI ecosystem with AI, robotics, software, product, startup, university, and external research partners.
• Define project scope, goals, and deliverables aligned with strategic business objectives.
• Lead fundamental and applied research toward real-world robotic systems and large-scale consumer deployment.
• Develop paradigms for multimodal foundation models, world-action models, generalist dexterity, and agentic robot orchestration.

Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, with a strong publication record and at least 3 years of industry experience.
• Deep research and engineering expertise in one or more of: robot foundation models, including VLAs, LBMs, diffusion or flow-matching policies for manipulation and locomotion; world-model training for robot action prediction; spatial intelligence; self-supervised visual foundation models; 3D scene reconstruction; embodied scene understanding; multimodal representation learning across vision, language, and touch; or learning from human demonstrations and self-play.
• At least 1 year of experience leading technically ambitious research projects in dynamic, fast-moving environments.
• Hands-on experience integrating AI models with real robotic systems, including manipulators and/or mobile robots.
• Experience with RGB and depth cameras, LiDAR, force-torque sensors, and tactile sensors.
• Experience with physics-based simulation platforms such as PyBullet, MuJoCo, or Isaac Sim for large-scale data generation, experimentation, and evaluation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas across research, engineering, and leadership teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work based at the Emerging Technology Lab in Silicon Valley.
• Opportunity to transition frontier research into real-world products at global scale while maintaining research ownership, publication, and university or AI-lab collaboration.
• Full-time benefits include medical, dental, vision, prescription, life, and disability insurance, with no-cost employee premiums for eligible employees and dependents.
• 401(k) matching with immediate vesting, paid holidays, combined sick and vacation time, and paid parental leave.
• Performance-based short-term incentives, mental health resources, and personal fitness incentives.