Founding Research Partnerships Lead — Robotics & AI Labs

Menlo; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Menlo Research is seeking a founding go-to-market leader for Asimov in the US research market. You will own a regional territory from first technical conversation to deployment and expansion, translating researchers' work into robot hardware, software, data needs, and deployment plans.

You will build direct relationships with lab leaders, run technical discovery, and drive initial deployments into multi‑site purchases while feeding feedback to product and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience producing paid commercial adoption inside AI labs, robotics labs, or closely comparable technical R&D organizations.
• Technical fluency to discuss ROS 2, Linux, Python, networking, and robot software integration.
• Comfort working hands-on with physical robots: setting up demonstrations and diagnosing issues.
• Ability and willingness to travel frequently within the US territory.
• Technical public-presentations experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and own a territory of university AI and robotics labs, corporate research organizations, and physical‑AI startups.
• Develop direct relationships with lab directors, principal investigators, research scientists, AI engineers, data teams, and corporate R&D leaders.
• Run technical discovery around each customer's research objectives, existing robotics and ML stack, data requirements, model‑development workflow, training and sim environment.
• Determine whether Asimov is the right platform and recommend configurations, accessories, software interfaces, data tools, services, and deployment plan.
• Transport, set up, operate, and demonstrate Asimov at customer labs, conferences, workshops, campus roadshows, and private events.
• Convert initial deployments into larger lab, department, corporate R&D, and multi‑site purchases.
• Bring requirements and competitive feedback back into Menlo's product, engineering, manufacturing, support, and docs teams.
• Represent Menlo credibly across the physical‑AI, embodied‑AI, robotics, and academic‑research communities and conferences.

Job description

Menlo Research is seeking a founding go-to-market leader for Asimov in the US research market. You will own a regional territory from first technical conversation to deployment and expansion, translating researchers' work into robot hardware, software, data needs, and deployment plans.

You will build direct relationships with lab leaders, run technical discovery, and drive initial deployments into multi‑site purchases while feeding feedback to product and engineering teams.