AI Research Scientist

Socket.dev; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Health insurance

Visa sponsorship

Team events

Job summary

RoboForce in Milpitas, CA is seeking researchers to advance AI-powered robot control through vision-language models and world-models. You will design and deploy VLMs/VLAs, train world models for long-horizon planning, and integrate multimodal data for natural human-robot communication.

The role emphasizes producing production-grade solutions with in-office collaboration five days a week and a strong track record in foundation models, PyTorch/JAX, and robotics.

Qualifications

• PhD in ML/Robotics or related field, or Master’s with 4+ years experience.
• Proficiency in Python and DL frameworks (PyTorch, JAX).
• Expertise in large foundation models (VLM, VLA) and world-model architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy vision-language models (VLM/VLA) for contextual understanding and robot action policies.
• Develop and train world models for action-conditioned prediction and long-horizon planning.
• Research approaches to improve world model fidelity with multimodal inputs (vision, language, proprioception).
• Develop foundation models with spatial reasoning for precise robotic actions.
• Integrate multimodal data for natural human-robot communication.
• Optimize and deploy models as production-grade solutions on RoboForce platforms.
• Requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration with teams.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

JAX

Transformers

World models

VLM/VLA

Education

PhD or Master with 4+ years relevant experience

Tools

TensorRT

CUDA

Job description

Why RoboForce

RoboForce is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI-powered Robo-Labor for dull, dirty, and dangerous work. The company's robots are engineered for demanding industrial environments, with a focus on real-world deployment and scalability.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy vision-language(-action) models (VLM/VLA) for contextual understanding and generalized robot action policies.
• Develop and train world models for action-conditioned prediction, long-horizon planning, and environment simulation - enabling robots to reason about the consequences of their actions before execution.
• Research approaches to improve world model fidelity using multi-modal inputs including vision, language, proprioception, and spatial representations.
• Develop foundation models with spatial reasoning capabilities to achieve high-precision robotic actions.
• Integrate multi-modal data sources (vision, language, speech, etc.) to enable natural human-robot communication.
• Optimize and deploy models as production-grade solutions on RoboForce robotic platforms.
• Requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration with the teams.

Requirements

• PhD degree in Machine Learning, Robotics, or related field, or Master's degree with 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX).
• Expertise in large foundation models (VLM, VLA, etc.).
• Strong understanding of world model architectures and action-conditioned generative modeling for robot learning.
• Decent understanding of multimodal models, modern ML architectures (transformers, diffusion models, etc.).

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with video generation or prediction models (e.g., diffusion-based video models, autoregressive video transformers) and their application to world modeling or synthetic data generation for robot learning.
• Strong publication record at top conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL, ICRA, or equivalent).
• Expertise in neural network deployment (e.g., TensorRT) and GPU programming with CUDA.
• Proven ability to design scalable experimentation and data pipelines.

Benefits

• Competitive stock options/equity programs.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) plan.
• Visa sponsorship and green card support for qualified candidates.
• Lunches and dinners, a fully stocked kitchen, and regular team-building events.