Robotics Research Intern - Post-Training

Location: Los Altos, California, United States; hybrid and in-office

Pay: $45–$65 per hour for California-based roles

Company

hirify.global develops research tools and capabilities in robotics, human-centered AI, driving, and energy and materials to improve human mobility and quality of life.

What you will do

• Investigate open research questions in the post-training and adaptation of pretrained generalist robot policies.
• Develop methods for offline-to-online reinforcement learning, imitation learning, DAgger, and human-in-the-loop policy improvement.
• Explore sim-to-real policy distillation, world-model-based planning, policy improvement, and data generation.
• Study data-efficient adaptation to new robotic tasks and environments.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers across the Robotics division.
• Produce scientific results and, where appropriate, publish at leading robotics and machine-learning venues.

Requirements

• Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field.
• Research experience in robot learning, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, generative modeling, world models, or a related area.
• Interest in open research problems involving large-scale machine learning grounded in physical systems.
• Proficiency in Python and a deep-learning framework such as PyTorch.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with researchers and engineers and communicate research findings clearly.

Nice to have

• Experience with pretrained generalist policies, foundation models, or large-scale robot-learning systems.
• Familiarity with offline or online reinforcement learning, DAgger, interactive learning, or human-in-the-loop methods.
• Experience with simulation, sim-to-real transfer, policy distillation, robotic manipulation, learned world models, model-based reinforcement learning, or planning.
• Publication record or interest in publishing at leading robotics and machine-learning conferences and journals.
• Interest in translating fundamental research into reliable methods evaluated on real robotic systems and practical downstream tasks.

Culture & Benefits

• Paid Fall 2026 internship with close collaboration across the Robotics division.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Paid time off, including holiday pay and sick time.