Are you passionate about advancing the capabilities of autonomous robots through cutting-edge AI and machine learning? Do you enjoy working on innovative solutions that bring state-of-the-art research into real-world applications? Our growing robotics startup is looking for an AI Research Engineer, Applied, to join our team. Your contributions will help define how robots operate in dynamic, real-world environments, bringing meaningful impact to customers and industries.

In this role, you will develop and maintain software for our on-robot autonomy stack, applying the latest advancements in AI research, including perception, multimodal models, and large language models (LLMs). You’ll work on tasks such as training machine learning models for perception (e.g., segmentation, detection, pose estimation), optimizing them for on-robot deployment, and using machine learning and AI to improve fleet-level performance. By collaborating closely with our Foundation Models AI research team, you’ll play a pivotal role in advancing the capabilities of our robots deployed at customer sites.

Collaborative Robotics is a team of innovators and builders redefining the future of human-robot interaction. We are working to realize a world where robots are a trusted extension of your surroundings. They work, adapt, and react around you. Not the other way around.

This role is located at our Santa Clara, CA headquarters, or Seattle, WA office. 

Applicants must graduate prior to August 2025 to be eligible for this role. The application deadline for this role is January 1st, 2025. Interviews will take place mid-January 2025, for Summer 2025 start dates.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain software for our on-robot autonomy stack leveraging the latest AI research in perception, multimodal models, and LLMs
• Leverage open source models and the latest research papers to improve the capabilities of our robots operating in customer sites 
• Use AI to improve fleet level performance of our robots including intelligent task queuing
• Train machine learning models for perception tasks such as segmentation, detection, and pose estimation 
• Optimize trained models for on-robot deployment
• Work closely with our Foundation Models AI research team to apply their research to our robot platform

Minimum Qualifications: 

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, AI, Machine Learning, or related field.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as Pytorch, Tensorflow, etc.
• Experience working with point clouds, depth images, and other types of 3D data.
• Understanding of multimodal models, modern ML architectures (transformers, diffusion models, etc.)
• Experience with perception for robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other real world applications.
• Proficiency with Git, version control, and Linux environments.
• Skilled in Python.
• Highly motivated teammate with excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Enjoy working in a fast paced, collaborative and dynamic start-up environment as part of a small team.
• Willing to occasionally travel.
• Must have and maintain US work authorization.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to deploy ML models to robots in production.
• Practical experience with ML software engineering best practices – for example, experiment tooling, data pipelines, model training, and workflow automation. 
• Experience optimizing ML models for deployment in compute constrained environments.
• Familiarity with edge compute architectures.

The base salary range for this position is $170,000 - $180,000 plus equity and comprehensive benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role and experience level. The range reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position in Santa Clara, CA and Seattle, WA. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.