VLA Pre-training Engineer (Deep Learning)

Thehumanoid; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

23 days annual leave

Fully funded private healthcare

8% pension contribution

Free daily breakfast

Catered lunch and snacks

Collaboration with experts in AI and robotics

Job summary

Thehumanoid is hiring a VLA Pre-training Engineer (Deep Learning) in London to enhance their AI robotics through training capable policies using deep learning. You will manage complex data processes, partner with teams for data quality, and ensure continuous training cycles. Preferred qualifications include 3+ years in deep learning, proficiency in Python and frameworks like PyTorch/JAX, and effective communication. The role offers 23 days off, private healthcare, and a pension scheme.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of building deep learning systems with shipped models.
• Experience with deep learning infrastructure like streaming datasets.
• Strong Python skills with ability to debug and ensure code maintainability.

Responsibilities

• Post-train policies via behaviour cloning and RL.
• Partner with Data Collection to gather high-quality data.
• Maintain continuous pipelines for data ingestion and retraining.

Skills

Deep learning systems experience

Hands-on with LLMs, VLMs, or generative models

Python and PyTorch/JAX proficiency

Modern software engineering best practices

Experiment documentation and communication

Job description

Here at Humanoid, we believe in a future where robots amplify human potential. That’s why we’ve set out on a mission to build the world’s most capable, commercially-scalable, and safe humanoid robots. We’re bringing that mission to life with HMND‑01 Alpha - our rapidly developed humanoid platform now running in real industrial pilots - and we’re growing the team to take it even further.

About the Role

We're hiring a VLA Pre-training Engineer (Deep Learning) to join our Autonomy team based in London. In this role you will you will work on all aspects of training capable policies, be it pre-training of a base model on a diverse multi-embodiment corpus of trajectories, fine-tuning a policy to perform a specific task well, curating data collection processes or exploring productive ways to generate and use synthetic data. This is primarily a deep learning-focused role, so we are looking for experience solving real problems using modern neural networks, while experience in robotics isn’t strictly required. However if you don’t have such experience, be prepared that you’d need to familiarize yourself with a new domain quickly.

What You'll Do

• Post-train policies via behaviour cloning and RL; own the full loop from data to deployment.
• Partner with the Data Collection team to drive collecting new data: specify what good data looks like, identify failure modes, ensure diversity and coverage.
• Work closely with external partners to ensure steady supply of high-quality pretraining-scale data.
• Run pre-/mid-/post-training on VLA stack; explore new modalities and architecture changes.
• Build and maintain continuous pipelines: ingest synthetic data and teleop logs, version them, apply weak‑supervision labelling, curate balanced datasets, and auto‑surface fresh failure cases into retraining.
• Work with MLOps & Data Platform teams to scale distributed training and optimize models for real‑time edge inference.

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years building deep‑learning systems (industry or research) with shipped models or published artifacts to show for it.
• Deep hands‑on experience with at least one of: LLMs, VLMs, or image/video generative models — architecture, training, and inference.
• Experience with deep learning infrastructure: streaming datasets, checkpointing & state management, distributed training strategies.
• Strong Python + PyTorch/JAX; you can profile, debug numerics, and write maintainable research code.
• Familiarity with modern software engineering practices.
• You document experiments clearly and communicate trade‑offs crisply.

Nice to have

• Robotics or autonomous driving experience.
• Experience applying RL to LLMs or robotics.
• Experience with VLA (vision-language-action) models.
• Proven productization of deep nets (latency/throughput constraints, telemetry, on‑device optimization).
• Publications at top-tier deep learning conferences or equivalent open‑source contributions.
• Familiarity with OpenVLA, Physical Intelligence (π) models, or similar open source VLA frameworks.

What We Offer

• Meaningful time off to rest and recharge: 23 days of annual leave (accrued), separate sick leave, and paid bank holidays and company holidays.
• Fully funded private healthcare for UK employees, with broad provider access, virtual and in‑person care, and strong mental health and serious illness support.
• Pension scheme with a total 8% contribution (5% employee, 3% employer) on full earnings.
• Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in‑office.
• Collaboration with top‑tier engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics.
• Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives.