Autonomy Engineer: Robotic Manipulation

FieldAI; Peoria (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

FieldAI is building the future of autonomy and is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer – Manipulation to drive whole-body control for humanoids and arm‑equipped quadrupeds. You will translate real field scenarios into robust behaviors and deploy on hardware with close collaboration across perception, locomotion, and systems teams.

You will develop learning‑based and model‑based manipulation policies, train from demonstrations, adapt vision language action models, and ensure safe operation in

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or higher in Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (PhD strongly preferred)
• Deep expertise in robot manipulation or whole‑body control
• 2+ years of experience developing and deploying manipulation behaviors on real robotic systems (preferred)
• Hands‑on experience with robot arms, hands or grippers, and humanoid or mobile manipulation platforms
• Solid understanding of kinematics, dynamics, contact modeling, and force control
• Experience with manipulation planning and control, such as trajectory optimization or model predictive control (MPC)
• Experience with learning based manipulation, such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning (RL), or vision language action models
• Proficiency with simulation tools such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or Drake
• Experience integrating perception for manipulation
• Strong Python and/or C++ development skills in Linux-based development environments
• Familiarity with machine learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
• A passion for building things that move in the real world

Responsibilities

• Develop whole-body control and manipulation capabilities for humanoids and quadrupeds with arms, coordinating base, torso, and arm motion as a single system
• Take specific field scenarios from concept to repeatable execution on hardware, interacting with the built environment and handling objects and tools
• Build learning based and model based manipulation policies and integrate them tightly with perception and locomotion
• Train manipulation policies from demonstration data and adapt vision language action (VLA) foundation models to our robots and tasks, then make them work on hardware
• Design grasp, contact, and force interaction strategies that hold up across varied objects, surfaces, and environments, with interaction forces kept safe for people and equipment nearby
• Harden behaviors so they succeed across repeated runs, changing lighting, object variation, and real site conditions
• Build simulation environments and evaluation pipelines for manipulation, and use field data to close the gap between simulation and the real world
• Deploy on physical robots and iterate rapidly through lab testing and field validation
• Work closely with locomotion, perception, and systems engineers to deliver end to end capabilities

Skills

Robot manipulation

Whole-body control

Python

C++

ROS/ROS2

Machine learning

VLA models

MuJoCo

Kinematics

Hardware deployment

Education

Master’s in Robotics or CS

PhD preferred

Tools

Isaac Lab

MuJoCo

Drake

PyTorch

TensorFlow

NVIDIA TensorRT

ONNX Runtime

ROS/ROS2

Job description

FieldAI is building the future of autonomy and is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer – Manipulation to drive whole-body control for humanoids and arm‑equipped quadrupeds. You will translate real field scenarios into robust behaviors and deploy on hardware with close collaboration across perception, locomotion, and systems teams.

You will develop learning‑based and model‑based manipulation policies, train from demonstrations, adapt vision language action models, and ensure safe operation in