Human-Robot Interaction Applied Scientist, Fauna

The Robot Age; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Fauna is hiring an applied scientist focused on human-robot interaction for a home robot. The role centers on verbal and non-verbal interaction, social dynamics, memory, and long-term relationship formation.

The work sits at the intersection of robotics, large language models, multimodal interaction, and user-facing behavior, aiming to make robot responses fluid, socially appropriate, and trustworthy in real environments.

Qualifications

• Applied science experience in HRI, embodied AI, social robotics, or conversational systems.
• Ability to reason about both technical model behavior and human perception.
• Comfort evaluating interactions that unfold over time in physical settings.
• Experience collaborating with design, research, and robotics engineering partners.

Responsibilities

• Develop HRI systems for conversation, turn-taking, grounding, and interruption handling.
• Use multimodal signals and physical context to shape robot behavior.
• Explore RLHF or related feedback methods for social robot interaction.
• Work with design and robotics teams to turn research into embodied behavior.

Skills

HRI

Embodied AI

Conversational systems

Social robotics

Job description

What the role actually is

Fauna is hiring an applied scientist focused on human-robot interaction for a home robot. The job centers on verbal and non-verbal interaction, conversational behavior, social dynamics, memory, and long-term relationship formation.

The work sits between robotics, large language models, multimodal interaction, and user-facing behavior. It is about making robot responses feel fluid, socially appropriate, and trustworthy in real environments.

What you would work on

• Develop HRI systems for conversation, turn-taking, grounding, and interruption handling
• Use multimodal signals and physical context to shape robot behavior
• Explore RLHF or related feedback methods for social robot interaction
• Work with design and robotics teams to turn research into embodied behavior

What they are asking for

• Applied science experience in HRI, embodied AI, social robotics, or conversational systems
• Ability to reason about both technical model behavior and human perception
• Comfort evaluating interactions that unfold over time in physical settings
• Experience collaborating with design, research, and robotics engineering partners

Why this one is worth a look

Most robotics jobs optimize task completion. This one is explicitly about the social layer: how a robot behaves around people, remembers context, and avoids feeling brittle or awkward. That makes it highly aligned with The Robot Age's HRI lens.