Research Scientist, Robot Learning

Location: Hybrid in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Salary: $158,400–$227,700 per year for Massachusetts-based roles.

Company

hirify.global develops AI, robotics, driving, and materials-science technologies to improve human life and advance mobility.

What you will do

• Advance the science of robot learning models using language, video, action, and multimodal data.
• Implement, extend, and create state-of-the-art methods for robot behavior learning, including reinforcement learning and imitation learning.
• Develop internal robotic capabilities and contribute to high-impact external research publications.
• Collaborate with research scientists, engineers, and partner laboratories at leading universities.
• Support research and deployment of robots that operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments and collaborate with people.

Requirements

• PhD in computer science, machine learning, robotics, or a closely related field.
• Experience training large models and deploying them on embodied systems, especially for robotic manipulation.
• Strong software development skills in Python, familiarity with mixed C++/Python codebases, and a focus on clean, maintainable code.
• Extensive practical machine-learning experience with a major framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, plus familiarity with data pipelines, model serving and optimization, cloud training, and dataset management.
• Strong understanding of state-of-the-art robot learning, including generative models such as diffusion policy and flow matching, reinforcement learning, and/or world models.
• Practical experience with robots and the system-integration challenges of research and deployment on physical hardware platforms.
• Ability to move quickly between rapid prototyping and robust implementation.
• Demonstrated impact through first-author publications at top-tier machine-learning or robotics conferences, or meaningful contributions to successful industry initiatives.

Nice to have

• Industry experience in robotics and machine-learning research or related projects.
• Experience with ROS 2, communication methods and protocols, and modern ML infrastructure pipelines, approaches, and tools.
• Experience with VR-based teleoperation for real-time robot control.
• Background in motion control and actuation, whole-body control, reinforcement learning, robot teleoperation, research robotic arms, visual perception, depth sensors, robotic simulation, force and tactile sensing, or haptic interfaces.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a cross-functional robotics research team spanning hardware, simulation, perception, controls, and machine learning.
• Collaborative environment with opportunities to work with internal researchers, engineers, and academic partner laboratories.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) eligibility, paid vacation, sick time, and parental leave.
• Annual cash bonus structure and a commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace.