Founding Senior Research Scientist (Physical AI - Models and/or Robotics)

Gtm Week; Toulouse; Ibrido; EUR 85.000 - 115.000; Tempo pieno

Vantaggi offerti da questo lavoro

Equity 0.05–0.1%

Compute budget

Conference travel

On-site Toulouse

Descrizione del lavoro

TechTree is opening its research lab in Toulouse, France, seeking a founding researcher to tackle world models for physical AI. You will lead interdisciplinary research connecting machine learning, robotics, and cognitive science, shaping how data and models learn from real-world environments.

You’ll publish in top venues, mentor students and engineers, and help deploy open benchmarks. This role offers equity, personal compute budgets, and an on-site location in Toulouse with international

Competenze

• PhD in machine learning, robotics, applied mathematics, physics or mechanics with several years of research in academia or industry.
• Strong publication record in top venues (NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR, RSS/CoRL/ICRA, CVPR/ICCV/ECCV).
• Hands-on coding and experiments, with ability to run and interpret results.

Mansioni

• Design and conduct research on world models for physical AI and publish in top journals/conferences.
• Build the Lab's reputation by collaborating with AI and robotics teams.
• Showcase data through publications and open benchmarks.
• Mentor junior researchers, PhD students and interns.
• Inform strategy by reporting trends to leadership.

Conoscenze

Fluent English

Hands-on coding

Research collaboration

Formazione

PhD in ML/robotics

Strumenti

PyTorch

JAX

Multi-GPU computing

Descrizione del lavoro

We are a fast-growing, Y Combinator-backed data company headquartered in San Francisco, collecting human and robot data to train robots. We already work with some of the most recognised robotics and AI labs in the United States, and we plan to raise our Series A before the end of the year.

Today we specialise in collecting real-world egocentric data at a scale and speed no lab could reach on its own. Every contributor is identity-verified (KYC), and every contribution goes through several layers of quality control before it reaches a client. Looking ahead, we aim to become a key player in deploying robots at scale and to help make physical AI data accessible.

We are now opening our research lab in Toulouse, France. With a large volume of varied data collected directly at the source by our contributors - access no academic lab has - the Lab will support the future deployment of our robot fleet through research. Its engineers build the infrastructure to turn ideas into results quickly and at scale, and then turn those results into data the teams training tomorrow's models can use.

The role

As a founding researcher at the Lab, you'll join a multidisciplinary research team tackling the challenges of world models for physical AI.

We need to adapt our data collection and collection setups as fast as possible to how world models evolve and what data they need. The Lab focuses on two open questions:

What data is relevant to teach a model the physical world?

What data lets a model adjust or evolve once it is deployed?

What you'll do

• Research: design and carry out research on these questions, publish in top journals and conferences, and take part in workshops with the best public and private research teams working on world models for physical AI.
• Build the Lab's reputation: make the Lab a team recognised worldwide by its peers, and work directly with the AI and robotics research teams that train on our data.
• Showcase the data: put our data to work in publications - for example by proposing open benchmarks - and aim for work that spreads.
• Mentor: guide junior researchers, PhD students and interns.
• Inform strategy: report trends in the scientific literature to operational leadership.

What we're looking for

• A PhD in machine learning, robotics, applied mathematics, physics or mechanics, followed by several years of research in academia or an industrial lab.
• Publications at top venues in your field: NeurIPS, ICML or ICLR (learning); RSS, CoRL or ICRA (robotics); CVPR, ICCV or ECCV (vision).
• Deep expertise in at least one of: world models and model-based planning; reinforcement learning (offline, goal-conditioned, or RL for large models); training or post-training large models; robot learning and control; physical or differentiable simulation; self-supervised learning from video and 3D.
• Still hands-on: you write code, run your experiments and read the results yourself.
• You enjoy working daily with engineers and researchers across disciplines - world models mix data, simulation, robotics and learning.
• You have mentored students or a small team, and people want to work with you again.
• Fluent English, written and spoken.

Nice to have

• Open-source libraries, datasets or benchmarks used by other teams.
• Experience organising a workshop, or serving as an area chair.
• Links with public research institutions (Inria, CNRS, universities) and experience co-supervising PhDs with industry.
• Work on egocentric video, human-to-robot transfer or teleoperation data.

Research environment

Petabytes of real-world multi-camera recordings, growing every day - plus the ability to collect new data at scale when a question calls for it.

A teleoperation lab in Toulouse with robotic cells and everyday-life scenes.

Multi-GPU compute on H100s, PyTorch and JAX, and the simulators your work needs.

An open programme: datasets on Hugging Face and challenges for external teams.

Data no academic lab has, and a team that collects more when your research calls for it.

Scientific freedom: publication and open source by default, with clear rules on what stays private, agreed before you join.

A founding seat: the first researchers shape the Lab.

Your work goes straight to the biggest AI and robotics labs, as data, models and benchmarks they use.

A San Francisco company with a research Lab in Toulouse and a team across San Francisco, São Paulo and Toulouse.

What we offer

Equity: 0.05% - 0.1% in stock options

Your own compute budget and conference travel

Location: Toulouse, France (on-site). The Lab opens by the end of the year.

Hiring process

Profile review - papers and citations, experience and education

Culture-fit call with our Head of Recruitment (30 min)

Take-home exercise designed by our Head of Research, based on our data

Call with our Head of Research (1 h)

Call with our CEO (30 min)