VP of Robotics Research – Robotics Data & Embodied AI

Full-Time · Remote

Base Salary: $250,000–$350,000/year

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a senior robotics research leader to define the research direction behind the next generation of robot learning.

As VP of Robotics Research, you’ll own the research strategy for the data foundations that enable increasingly capable robotic systems. You’ll shape how robotics data is collected, represented, evaluated, and scaled, while leading a team of researchers working across robotics, perception, machine learning, and embodied AI.

This is a deeply technical leadership role. You’ll set the research vision, build and mentor an exceptional research team, and remain close to the work through experimentation, technical problem-solving, and evaluation of emerging approaches.

The opportunity is particularly suited to someone who has worked at the intersection of robotics research and large-scale data and understands what it takes to turn promising research ideas into robust, scalable systems.

What You’ll Lead

Robotics Data & Robot Learning

• Define and execute the research strategy for robotics data, embodied AI, and robot learning.

• Lead research across robotics datasets, multimodal representations, perception, manipulation, and data-centric learning.

• Develop new approaches for collecting high-quality robotics data through teleoperation, human demonstrations, simulation, autonomous exploration, and real-world deployments.

• Establish scalable benchmarks and evaluation frameworks for measuring robot-learning performance.

• Evaluate emerging research, datasets, architectures, and techniques from leading academic and industry research programs.

Robotics Data Infrastructure

• Define how robotics data should be collected, structured, represented, annotated, evaluated, and delivered.

• Design scalable data pipelines covering collection workflows, task taxonomies, annotation schemas, quality-control processes, evaluation methodologies, and final data formats.

• Translate research objectives into clear data requirements, collection strategies, labeling standards, and measurable success criteria.

• Help bridge the gap between experimental research and production-grade robotics data systems.

• Partner with engineering, product, and operations teams to operationalize research and pipeline designs.

Research Leadership

• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing Robotics Research team.

• Establish a culture of scientific rigor, intellectual curiosity, rapid experimentation, and technical excellence.

• Set research priorities while remaining directly involved in important technical and experimental work.

• Foster collaboration across robotics research, engineering, product, and operations.

• Drive clear documentation, knowledge sharing, and communication of research findings and technical decisions.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for a proven robotics researcher and technical leader with substantial depth in robotics and a strong understanding of the data required to advance robot learning.

You should have:

• Significant experience in robotics research, embodied AI, robot learning, or robotics software engineering.

• Experience leading or mentoring high-performing research or technical teams.

• Deep knowledge of robotics data pipelines, multimodal datasets, and data infrastructure for robot learning.

• Strong expertise in one or more areas such as:

  • Robot perception

  • Robotic manipulation

  • Robot control

  • Imitation learning

  • Reinforcement learning

  • Robotics foundation models

• Experience designing, building, or evaluating large-scale robotics datasets and data-collection strategies.

• A track record of connecting research with practical engineering systems.

• Strong experimental and analytical capabilities.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• The ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary technical teams.

What Will Set You Apart

• Master’s or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

• Publications at leading conferences such as CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, or CVPR.

• Experience building large-scale robotics datasets, robotics data engines, or research infrastructure.

• Hands-on experience with robotics frameworks and simulation environments such as ROS, ROS2, Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Habitat, or ManiSkill.

• Significant contributions to open-source robotics projects.

• Research contributions that have advanced embodied AI, robot learning, perception, manipulation, or related areas.

• Experience taking robotics research from early experimentation toward scalable deployment.

Why This Role Matters

Robots need more than better models. They need better data, better representations, better evaluation, and better ways to learn from real-world interaction.

You’ll have the opportunity to help define those foundations—shaping the research agenda, data systems, evaluation frameworks, and team required to push robot learning forward.

This role offers substantial ownership across both research direction and execution, with the opportunity to build a world-class robotics research organization around a technically ambitious problem.

Compensation

• Base salary: $250,000–$350,000/year.

• Equity compensation.

• Performance-based bonus eligibility, depending on role and applicable policies.

• Comprehensive benefits package.

• Health insurance premium reimbursement.

• Paid time off.

• 401(k) plan with company match.

• Remote-first working environment.