Autonomous Lab Robotics Engineer

Hong Kong Quantum AI Lab Ltd; Hong Kong; On-site; HKD 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Hong Kong Quantum AI Lab is assembling the team for a Physical AI for Science venture, a joint effort with The University of Hong Kong and Caltech to build self-driving laboratories where AI agents design workflows and robots execute experiments.

You will integrate autonomous systems into laboratories and work on two complementary profiles: teaching robots new skills through perception, imitation and reinforcement learning, or making robotic systems reliable and production-ready.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building or working with robotic systems.
• Evidence of exceptional engineering or research ability.
• Learning agility and adaptability in fast-paced projects.
• Candidates graduating by July 2027 are welcome to apply.

Responsibilities

• Build robotic systems capable of performing scientific laboratory tasks reliably and repeatedly.
• Develop manipulation capabilities for laboratory objects such as vials, pipettes, powders, plates, containers and scientific instruments.
• Build perception and control systems that operate in messy real-world laboratory environments.
• Work closely with scientists to convert laboratory procedures into robotic skills.
• Develop and/or fine-tune VLA and other robot foundation models for laboratory tasks.
• Build data collection and demonstration pipelines for new robotic skills.
• Apply imitation learning, reinforcement learning and other learning-based approaches where they outperform conventional automation.
• Develop perception and manipulation policies that generalise across objects, instruments and experimental tasks.
• Evaluate new embodied-AI research and translate useful advances into working robotic systems.

Skills

Hands-on robotics experience

Learning agility

Entrepreneurial temperament

Evidence of exceptional engineering or

Robot systems integration

Education

Degree in robotics, CS, EE, ME or related field

Job description

Hong Kong Quantum AI Lab is assembling the team for a Physical AI for Science venture, a joint effort with The University of Hong Kong and Caltech to build self-driving laboratories where AI agents design workflows and robots execute experiments.

You will integrate autonomous systems into laboratories and work on two complementary profiles: teaching robots new skills through perception, imitation and reinforcement learning, or making robotic systems reliable and production-ready.