Applied Scientist: Indoor Robot Navigation & Sim-to-Real

The Robot Age; Sunnyvale, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Fauna is hiring an applied scientist focused on robot navigation in Sunnyvale. The role spans classical navigation, learning-based methods, foundation models, simulation, on-device evaluation, and sim-to-real transfer.

The work aims to make robot movement reliable, measurable, and safe in cluttered indoor spaces where humans share space with robots. This is a hands-on research role with direct product impact.

Qualifications

• Applied science experience in machine learning, robotics, navigation, or related fields.
• Strong programming ability in Python, C++, Java, or similar languages.
• Experience publishing, patenting, or evaluating technical research.
• Comfort turning experimental methods into product-relevant robot behavior.

Responsibilities

• Develop navigation methods for indoor environments with static and moving obstacles.
• Build simulation and on-device evaluation benchmarks for navigation behavior.
• Run sim-to-real transfer experiments and close reliability gaps.
• Compare classical, learning-based, and foundation-model approaches for autonomy.

Skills

Applied ML

Robotics

Navigation

Python

C++

Java

Tools

Python

C++

Java

Job description

Fauna is hiring an applied scientist focused on robot navigation in Sunnyvale. The role spans classical navigation, learning-based methods, foundation models, simulation, on-device evaluation, and sim-to-real transfer.

The work aims to make robot movement reliable, measurable, and safe in cluttered indoor spaces where humans share space with robots. This is a hands-on research role with direct product impact.