Senior / Staff AI Research Scientist, Foundation Models

The role

You will develop algorithms to advance robotic embodied intelligence. This includes building and training world models to enable robots to predict, plan, and generalize across complex physical tasks.

What you will do

• Design and deploy vision-language(-action) models (VLM/VLA) for contextual understanding and generalized robot action policies.
• Develop and train world models for action-conditioned prediction, long-horizon planning, and environment simulation.
• Research approaches to improve world model fidelity using multi-modal inputs.
• Develop foundation models with spatial reasoning capabilities.
• Integrate multi-modal data sources to enable natural human-robot communication.
• Optimize and deploy models as production-grade solutions on RoboForce robotic platforms.

Required qualifications

• PhD degree in Machine Learning, Robotics, or related field, or Master's degree with 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX).
• Expertise in large foundation models (VLM, VLA, etc.).
• Strong understanding of world model architectures and action-conditioned generative modeling for robot learning.
• Decent understanding of multimodal models, modern ML architectures (transformers, diffusion models, etc.).
• Requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration with the teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with video generation or prediction models and their application to world modeling or synthetic data generation for robot learning.
• Strong publication record at top conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL, ICRA, or equivalent).
• Expertise in neural network deployment (e.g., TensorRT) and GPU programming with CUDA.
• Proven ability to design scalable experimentation and data pipelines.

Benefits

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

Before you apply

• Visa sponsorship and green card support for qualified candidates.

About the company

RoboForce is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI–powered Robo-Labor for dull, dirty, and dangerous work. The company's robots are engineered for demanding industrial environments.