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Eka

Transport robotics platform with fleet management

Head of People

Full-Time
No salary listed
Expert
Cambridge, MA, USA+1 moreMore locations: Boston, MA, USA
In Person
People & HRCompensation & Benefits, HR Generalist & Employee Relations

About the job

Requirements
  • Broad experience across the People function, including People operations and employment/compliance fundamentals as well as compensation, performance management, organizational design, and manager development.
  • Firsthand experience at a fast-growing startup, ideally helping the organization scale through a meaningful stage of growth and change.
  • Experience building or materially improving People programs and processes rather than only operating within established systems.
  • Strong working knowledge of compensation and equity in a venture-backed company, including the ability to help leadership develop a coherent philosophy around employee rewards.
  • Experience advising leadership on organizational and employee matters while remaining comfortable working directly with employees and handling day-to-day issues.
  • Strong judgment and communication skills, particularly when navigating sensitive or ambiguous situations.
  • A hands-on, low-ego operating style and the judgment to know when a growing company needs more structure and when it does not.
Responsibilities
  • Partner with the leadership team on organizational design, headcount planning, and how teams should evolve as the company scales.
  • Refine the compensation, leveling, and rewards philosophy, including salary structures, bonuses, equity grants, and refresh programs.
  • Build practical approaches to performance, career development, manager training, and employee growth.
  • Help define and strengthen the company’s culture and employee experience as it grows.
  • Own the day-to-day People function, including HR policies and processes, benefits, payroll, compliance, employee relations, and employee support, working with external partners where appropriate.
  • Build lightweight, scalable People systems and work with the talent team to keep recruiting and People strategy aligned.
  • Develop manager training and support, particularly for first-time managers and technical leaders.
  • Advise leadership on employee relations, retention, organizational effectiveness, and other complex People matters.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience in robotics, artificial intelligence, deep technology, or another highly technical environment.
  • Experience helping technical individual contributors transition into first-time management roles.
  • Experience supporting international or geographic expansion.
  • Experience working with a professional employer organization or similarly outsourced HR infrastructure.

About the company

Eka Robotics builds transport robotics systems that use automated guided vehicles, control software, and fleet management tools to move materials and automate handling. The platform trains robot controllers in simulation with self-supervised learning and then transfers the learned policies to real robots through sim-to-real reinforcement learning. It differentiates itself with a team from MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, DeepMind, and Boston Dynamics and a focus on physical AI, combining robotics, perception, control, and fleet management in one platform. The goal is to enable machines to automatically learn about their environment and continuously improve, delivering autonomous transport robotics and embodied intelligence for robotics and drones.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$150M

Headquarters

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Founded

2025

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Eka is hiring ML, robotics, and embedded engineers to scale R&D.
  • Official site says it is deploying intelligence into the physical world.
  • Investor backing from MFV Partners and E14 signals early conviction in the thesis.

What critics are saying

  • Eka disclosed no customers, deployments, or commercialization timeline after launch.
  • Funding remains opaque, despite conflicting $13 million and $2.5 million reports.
  • VFA must beat VLA competitors like Physical Intelligence by benchmarks, or fade.

What makes Eka unique

  • Eka Robotics launched April 29, 2026 with force-first VFA robotics.
  • Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja combine MIT and DeepMind research depth.
  • Custom tactile grippers and sim-only reinforcement learning target superhuman manipulation.

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Benefits

  • Hybrid Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

55%

1 year growth

16%

2 year growth

16%
Crypto Briefing
Oct 20th, 2026
Eka Robotics reportedly raises $150M Series A at $1B valuation

Eka Robotics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, has reportedly raised a $150 million Series A, according to TechCrunch. The headline says a $1.45 billion valuation, but the article text cites $1 billion. Founded in 2025 by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, the company builds a robotic arm that can grasp a wide range of objects, from light bulbs to food products. It closed an $11 million seed round on May 9, 2025, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and MFV Partners. Eka trains robots through simulation-based reinforcement learning and physics reasoning, rather than copying human demonstrations. It employs about 25 people.

Crypto Headlines
Oct 20th, 2026
Eka Robotics reportedly hits $1.45B valuation with $150M Series A.

Eka Robotics reportedly hits $1.45B valuation with $150M Series A. Eka Robotics reportedly raised a $150M Series A at a $1B valuation for its physics-trained robotic arm that handles fragile objects.

LinkedIn
Apr 29th, 2026
Eka's Robotic Claw Revolutionizes Physical World | Obvious Ventures posted on the topic | LinkedIn

"From sorting chicken nuggets to screwing in lightbulbs, Eka's robotic claw feels like we're approaching a ChatGPT moment for the physical world." - Wired Magazine We're proud to back Pulkit Agrawal and team on this journey. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gE6sBwwV