Helix AI Engineer, Reinforcement Learning

Figureai; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Figureai, based in San Jose, CA, is seeking a Helix AI Engineer with expertise in Reinforcement Learning to advance humanoid robot autonomy. The role involves designing and implementing RL systems that enable robots to learn and improve through interaction and experience.

Responsibilities include algorithm development across simulated and real-world environments, ensuring robust policy performance. Ideal candidates should have a strong background in RL and relevant software engineering skills, and be prepared to work collaboratively in an office setting.

Qualifications

• Experience developing and applying reinforcement learning algorithms in complex environments.
• Strong understanding of RL fundamentals like policy optimization and value methods.
• Experience training policies in simulation and/or real-world systems.
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement reinforcement learning algorithms for embodied agents.
• Train policies that learn from feedback and large-scale experience.
• Develop reward modeling and credit assignment strategies.
• Improve policy robustness to real-world challenges.

Skills

Reinforcement Learning

Python

Deep Learning Frameworks

Experimental Rigor

Software Engineering Skills

Job description

Figure is an AI robotics company developing autonomous general-purpose humanoid robots. Our goal is to build embodied AI systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the real world. Figure is headquartered in San Jose, CA, and this role requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration.

Our Helix team is responsible for developing the core AI systems that power humanoid autonomy. We are looking for a Helix AI Engineer, Reinforcement Learning to develop learning systems that enable robots to acquire skills through interaction, feedback, and experience.

This role focuses on applying and advancing reinforcement learning across simulation and real-world environments—improving policy performance, robustness, and long-horizon decision-making in embodied systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement reinforcement learning algorithms for embodied agents operating in real-world and simulated environments
• Train policies that learn from interaction, feedback, and large-scale experience across diverse tasks
• Develop reward modeling, credit assignment, and exploration strategies for complex, long-horizon behaviors
• Improve policy robustness to real-world challenges such as noise, partial observability, and environment variability
• Work across online and offline RL settings, including learning from large-scale logged robot data
• Collaborate closely with pretraining, video, generative, agent, and robot learning teams to integrate RL into the full autonomy stack
• Build scalable training systems for RL, including distributed rollouts, simulation infrastructure, and experiment management
• Design evaluation frameworks to measure policy performance, stability, and generalization

Requirements

• Experience developing and applying reinforcement learning algorithms in complex environments
• Strong understanding of RL fundamentals (e.g., policy optimization, value methods, model-based RL)
• Experience training policies in simulation and/or real-world systems
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch
• Experience with large-scale experimentation and distributed training systems
• Strong experimental rigor and ability to diagnose and improve learning systems
• Solid software engineering skills and ability to build scalable, reliable systems
• Ability to operate independently and drive ambiguous, high-impact technical problems

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience applying RL to robotics, control systems, or embodied AI
• Experience with large-scale RL infrastructure (distributed rollouts, simulation at scale)
• Background in offline RL, imitation learning, or hybrid learning approaches
• Experience with reward modeling or human-in-the-loop learning
• Experience at leading AI labs such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, or xAI
• Familiarity with robotics systems, simulation environments, or real-world deployment constraints
• Publication record in reinforcement learning, machine learning, or robotics

The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.