# Research Engineer, Robotics - Roboticist **Company**: Ai2 **Location**: Seattle, WA **Work arrangement**: onsite **Experience**: senior **Job type**: full-time **Salary**: $128,880 - $193,320 **Category**: Engineering **Industry**: Technology **Apply**: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/thealleninstitute/jobs/8357323?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply **Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/job/research-engineer-robotics-roboticist-cc1a7786-51a/ ## Description We are seeking a Research Engineer, Robotics - Roboticist to join our team at Ai2. As a Research Engineer, you will own the control stack on our physical robots and the path from simulation to them. This is first and foremost a controls role: you will bring up and tune real-time, torque-level control on arms, multi-fingered hands, bimanual systems and humanoids, make it stable and safe enough that researchers run experiments on hardware every day, and build the interfaces that learned policies plug into. Responsibilities: - Build and own the real-time control stack: joint, impedance, operational-space and torque control on torque-controlled arms, hands and humanoids, with motion planning, safety layers and the interfaces that learned policies plug into, across embodiments. - Bring up, tune and stabilize whole-body controllers for humanoids and bimanual systems: QP-based or MPC-based whole-body control, state estimation (IMU, encoders, force/torque), contact handling and fall or fault recovery, and the sim-to-real transfer of learned locomotion and loco-manipulation policies. - Lead the setup, calibration, maintenance and tuning of our robots: arms, grippers, multi-fingered hands, humanoids, cameras and tactile sensors, across single-arm, bimanual, mobile and legged platforms. - Diagnose stability, latency and contact problems across hardware, firmware, control and learned policy, using system identification and dynamics models to turn algorithms into reliable real-world behaviour. - Design and build the hardware the lab needs: end-effectors, fingertips, sensor mounts, fixtures and test rigs, from CAD through 3D printing or machining, including integrating cameras, tactile sensors and hands. - Build the runtime and tooling around the robots: teleoperation and data collection, logging, monitoring, deployment and operator-facing tools, so the platform scales across robots, tasks and people. - Contribute to open-source releases and publications. Requirements: - Master's with 3+ years of experience, or PhD, in robotics, control or a related field. Strong candidates with a bachelor's and 3+ years of industry experience are also considered. - Controls: you have implemented and tuned real-time controllers (joint, impedance, operational-space or torque control) on physical robots, with a solid grounding in rigid-body dynamics, control theory, stability analysis and system identification. - Whole-body and floating-base control: you understand floating-base dynamics, contact constraints and inverse dynamics, and have worked with at least one of QP-based whole-body control, operational-space control or MPC, on hardware or in a high-fidelity simulator. - Manipulation: substantial hands-on experience with real-robot manipulation, including bring-up, calibration and control of arms with grippers or hands. - System design: you have designed robot software systems end to end (control loops at 500 Hz to 1 kHz, state estimation, data flow, and the interfaces between planning, perception and learning) and can reason about latency, reliability and failure modes. - Mechanical design: you have designed and built hardware that was used on a real robot, such as end-effectors, mounts, fixtures or rigs. - Robot learning: you have trained or deployed learned policies (imitation learning, RL or VLA) on real robots, and are comfortable with PyTorch and at least one simulation ecosystem (Isaac Lab, MuJoCo or similar). Benefits: - Medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program. - Voluntary life insurance program, voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, health savings account plan, healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans. - 401k plan. - $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses. - $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses. - Up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year. - Annual bonuses and long-term incentive plan. For more fresh new jobs, check out [yubhub.co](https://yubhub.co/). ## Skills ### Required - robotics - control - real-time controllers - rigid-body dynamics - control theory - stability analysis - system identification - Python - C++ - PyTorch ### Nice to have - humanoid whole-body control - Unitree platforms - QP-based whole-body control - MPC-based whole-body control - state estimation - contact handling - sim-to-real transfer - teleoperation systems - large-scale data collection - robotics middleware - infrastructure --- Source: [Apply at job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/thealleninstitute/jobs/8357323?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)