Research Engineer - Insight Recruitment : Job Details

Research Engineer, Foundation Models - Robotics

Salary: $250-350k + equity

Location: Boston (hybrid)

We are working with a very exciting startup who have just closed a highly successful Series A funding round, backed by a formidable team of visionary investors and industry leaders. Their mission is to fundamentally transform the world through intelligent robotics, solving the most complex challenges to enable future generations of machines that seamlessly integrate with and enhance human lives. We're building a world-class team at the intersection of AI and robotics, and we're looking for passionate Research Engineers to join their mission.

Are you a highly skilled and hands-on engineer with a deep passion for foundation models and their practical, real-world application in robotics? Do you thrive on bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and robust, scalable, and deployable systems? If you're ready to make a tangible and significant impact on the future of intelligent machines, we want to hear from you!

As a Research Engineer with our client, you will play a crucial role in bringing groundbreaking AI research to life. This position offers a unique blend of deep technical challenge and direct influence on the development and capabilities of innovative robotic systems.

In this high-impact role, you will:

• Implement and optimize state-of-the-art deep learning models, with a specific focus on foundation models for complex robotic manipulation, dynamic navigation, and high-level autonomous task planning.
• Design and build robust, scalable data pipelines for large-scale learning, encompassing data acquisition, rigorous curation, and intelligent augmentation for diverse multi-modal robotic datasets.
• Develop and maintain high-performance training and inference infrastructure for large-scale models, including advanced distributed training systems, model parallelism techniques, and efficient serving mechanisms.
• Collaborate intensely with our distinguished research scientists to translate theoretical advancements and novel algorithms into practical, efficient, and reliable codebases for deployment on cutting-edge robotic platforms.
• Deploy, test, and rigorously evaluate models on real-world robotic systems and in high-fidelity simulation environments, iterating quickly based on empirical performance metrics and real-time operational feedback.
• Contribute significantly to our engineering best practices, including thorough code reviews, comprehensive documentation, and the development of modular and scalable system designs.

Who we're looking for:

• Education: An MS or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related quantitative field.
• Experience: A minimum of 3+ years of hands-on experience in software development and/or research engineering, with a strong focus on machine learning and/or robotics applications.
• Technical Expertise: Proven proficiency in implementing, training, and deploying large-scale deep learning models, particularly large language models and multi-modal foundation models, within a robotics context.
• Distributed Systems: Practical experience with distributed training techniques (e.g., data parallelism, model parallelism, FSDP) and optimizing model performance on high-performance computing clusters.
• Coding Expertise: Exceptional command of leading deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX, and advanced proficiency in Python and/or C++.
• Robotics Focus: Demonstrated familiarity with robotics frameworks (e.g., ROS, Isaac Sim), robotic control, and hands-on experience working with real-world robotic hardware is highly desirable.

Bonus points if you bring experience in:

• MLOps, DevOps, or building robust, production-grade infrastructure for large-scale AI systems.
• Docker, Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), and advanced orchestration workflows.
• Big data processing tools like Spark, Ray, Dask, and GPU optimization with CUDA parallel programming.
• Active contributions to open-source ML or robotics projects.

This is an extraordinary opportunity to be at the absolute forefront of AI and robotics innovation. You'll join a passionate, intellectually vibrant, and collaborative team dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what intelligent machines can achieve. If you're excited to translate cutting-edge research into real-world robotic impact, let's build the future together!