Postdoctoral Fellowship (Robotics and AI)

TL;DR

Postdoctoral Fellowship (Robotics and AI): Conducting independent and collaborative research in robotics, AI, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) with an accent on translating frontier academic ideas into physical systems deployed in real-world environments. Focus on designing experiments, developing theoretical frameworks, and integrating models into robot control pipelines to advance the state of the art in robotic intelligence.

Location: Must be based in or able to work from Palo Alto, CA or Seoul, Korea

Salary: $100,000–$125,000 (California range)

Company

hirify.global is a research-driven startup backed by KRAFTON, focused on building general-purpose robotic intelligence systems through large-scale data-driven machine learning.

What you will do

• Design and lead an independent research agenda in collaboration with the core research team.
• Conduct experiments, user studies, and field deployments to evaluate hypotheses on real hardware.
• Develop theoretical frameworks and translate them into prototype robot behaviors.
• Synthesize academic literature across HRI, HCI, and AI to inform research direction.
• Integrate developed models and algorithms into robot control pipelines.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with engineers and product teams to translate research into deployable systems.

Requirements

• PhD (completed or expected by start date) in HRI, HCI, Robotics, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or a closely related field.
• Strong record of research contributions demonstrated through publications or preprints.
• Experience conducting rigorous experiments and system evaluations.
• Ability to work independently and drive a research agenda with minimal supervision.
• Must be able to work onsite in Palo Alto or Seoul.

Nice to have

• Hands-on prototyping experience with physical robots.
• Experience designing and running controlled user studies.
• Familiarity with ROS, Python, or related robotics software tools.
• Experience with LLMs applied to robot behavior and task planning.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation commensurate with post-doctoral research experience.
• Full access to state-of-the-art robot platforms, compute infrastructure, and deployment environments.
• Direct mentorship from the founding research team and access to KRAFTON's AI Center network.
• Collaborative, fast-moving research culture valuing independent thinking.
• Opportunity for the fellowship to convert to a full-time research role.