Lead Applied Scientist, Robotics Autonomy

Amazon; New York (NY); On-site; USD 241,000 - 326,000; Full time

Job summary

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive next-generation manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in complex real-world environments. You will shape the technical direction from problem formulation to real-world deployment and evolve into technical leadership and team building over time.

You will lead cross-functional teams across perception, control, and hardware to build tightly integrated autonomy pipelines and define rigorous evaluation

Qualifications

• PhD or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
• 5+ years of industry or academic research experience
• Experience in Java, C++, Python, or a related language
• Strong publication record at major Robotics/ML/AI conferences (e.g., RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR)
• Experience with simulation environments for robot learning (Isaac Gym/Lab, MuJoCo, or similar)
• Experience with sim-to-real transfer for robotic systems
• Demonstrated track record of leading technical projects
• Experience mentoring junior scientists/engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead research and development of manipulation and autonomy systems for robots, including planning, control, learning, and closed-loop execution
• Design and implement algorithms, especially focused around autonomy and interaction with dynamic environments
• Work closely with perception, motor control, hardware, and systems teams to build tightly integrated autonomy pipelines
• Define evaluation methodologies, benchmarks, and simulation-to-real workflows for manipulation and autonomy
• Stay deeply engaged with the research community, selectively incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into deployed systems
• Mentor and guide other researchers and engineers, help set technical direction, and contribute to team growth and research culture
• Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment
• Bridge research initiatives with practical engineering implementation

Skills

Leadership

Robotics research

Programming

Education

PhD

Master's degree

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

MuJoCo

Job description

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive next-generation manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in complex real-world environments. You will shape the technical direction from problem formulation to real-world deployment and evolve into technical leadership and team building over time.

You will lead cross-functional teams across perception, control, and hardware to build tightly integrated autonomy pipelines and define rigorous evaluation