Lead AI Research Engineer, Embodied Systems (Robotics)

Location: Milpitas, California, United States; 5 days per week in-office

Salary: $190,000–$265,000 USD annually, plus bonus and equity

Company

hirify.global is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI-powered robots for dull, dirty, and dangerous industrial work, with a focus on real-world deployment and scalability.

What you will do

• Lead the engineering of the embodied systems powering the data flywheel, including onboard inference, data collection, teleoperation, and on-robot reinforcement learning.
• Set the technical direction and architecture for running, evaluating, and improving learned models on physical robots.
• Deliver end-to-end systems from robot bring-up through reliable, real-time operation in demanding industrial environments.
• Own on-robot deployment and closed-loop policy evaluation, converting real-world performance into measurable improvements.
• Partner with robotics software and ML research teams to align interfaces and priorities across the stack.
• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar for embodied systems.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field with significant relevant experience, or a PhD.
• Track record of leading complex robotic or embodied systems end-to-end and setting technical direction.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python, with solid systems programming and real-time, performance-critical engineering skills.
• Hands-on experience with ROS/ROS2 and robot middleware, including real-time integration of sensing, control, and compute.
• Experience integrating and deploying ML models or policies into real-time robotic or autonomous systems, with an emphasis on system ownership and engineering.
• Must collaborate in the office 5 days per week.

Nice to have

• Experience with teleoperation and large-scale robot data collection systems, including VR, UR, GELLO, or UMI.
• Experience with on-robot reinforcement learning or closed-loop policy improvement.
• Familiarity with VLA, imitation learning, behavior cloning, manipulation stacks, whole-body control interfaces, or real-time middleware tuning.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive stock options and equity programs.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) plan.
• Visa sponsorship and green card support are available for qualified candidates.
• Lunches and dinners, a stocked kitchen, and regular team-building events.