Lead Principal Applied Scientist - Robotics

Oracle; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

401(k) with match

Paid time off

Job summary

Oracle is seeking an IC5 Applied Scientist for Robotics, Perception, and Embodied AI to lead research and drive production-ready AI for robotic systems.

You will guide cross-functional teams across science, software, and hardware to translate product needs into executable roadmaps and deliver real-world perception and multimodal AI.

Qualifications

• PhD/MS/BS with strong foundation in ML, robotics, and perception.
• Proven track record in research leadership and production-grade delivery.
• Expertise in sensor fusion, real-time processing, and multimodal AI.

Responsibilities

• Define research plans and milestones for perception and embodied AI.
• Lead end-to-end experiments from data collection to production deployment.
• Collaborate with software, hardware, and product teams to deliver robotic AI capabilities.

Skills

Python

C++

PyTorch

ROS

Robotics

Machine Learning

Computer Vision

Perception

Reinforcement Learning

Education

PhD in a related field

MS in related field

BS in related field

Tools

ROS

TensorFlow

PyTorch

CUDA

Job description

Job Description

IC5 Applied Scientist for Robotics, Perception, and Embodied AI will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for defining, prototyping, and delivering AI capabilities for commercially viable robotic systems. This role partners across science, software engineering, product, and hardware teams to identify high-impact opportunities, translate ambiguous product needs into research and engineering roadmaps, and guide end-to-end solution development from data collection and experimentation through production deployment. The scientist will lead applied research in multi-sensor fusion, real-time signals, perception, multimodal reasoning, reinforcement learning, and action-conditioned planning, with a strong bias for hands-on execution and full-stack delivery.

Solution Identification and Strategy

• Partner with science, engineering, product, and hardware leaders to identify strategic product needs where robotics, perception, and embodied AI can create measurable customer and business impact.
• Evaluate academic literature, industry benchmarks, robotics platforms, and commercially viable robot APIs to assess feasibility, technical difficulty, and delivery risks.
• Break down ambiguous robotics and AI problems into clear research plans, model architectures, data requirements, evaluation criteria, and production milestones.
• Set science quality standards for applied robotics workstreams, including perception accuracy, latency, robustness, safety, reliability, and operational feedback metrics.
• Prioritize solutions using the scientific process, including modeling approaches, evaluation techniques, data collection strategies, and risk/reward tradeoffs.

Applied Research and Model Development

• Lead the design and execution of research programs and POCs for sensors, multi-sensor fusion, real-time signal processing, and perception systems.
• Develop and guide approaches for object detection, tracking, activity recognition, scene understanding, and related perception capabilities in real-world environments.
• Advance multimodal AI systems that combine signals such as camera, depth, lidar, audio, telemetry, proprioception, and task context.
• Apply reinforcement learning, action-conditioned planning, decision-making, and reasoning methods to enable robot behaviors that are robust, measurable, and product-relevant.
• Define dataset strategy, data quality criteria, labeling approaches, simulation or synthetic data opportunities, and evaluation protocols for robotics and embodied AI use cases.
• Guide model training, fine-tuning, optimization, inference design, and compute/latency tradeoffs for real-time or near-real-time deployment scenarios.

Solution Delivery and Production Integration

• Lead full-stack execution across experimentation, data pipelines, model development, evaluation, deployment integration, and production monitoring.
• Partner closely with software engineering, machine learning engineering, hardware teams, and product stakeholders to integrate AI capabilities into robotic systems and services.
• Evaluate and review high-complexity code, establish best practices for repositories, version control, code review, documentation, testing, and delivery readiness.
• Define operational metrics and user feedback loops to assess delivered solutions in production and inform future technical strategy.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex robotics, AI, perception, and systems integration issues, driving root-cause analysis and durable solutions.

Research Leadership and Influence

• Demonstrate thought leadership in at least one business-critical area such as robot perception, multimodal systems, sensor fusion, reinforcement learning, or embodied AI.
• Translate research insights into clear technical recommendations, patents, white papers, design documents, demos, or conference-quality publications where appropriate.
• Mentor and guide scientists and engineers, raising the bar for applied research rigor, experimentation quality, and production readiness.
• Establish productive collaborations with internal teams, external research groups, academic partners, or commercial robotics ecosystem partners where relevant.

Core Competencies

• Bias for action with a strong hands-on orientation; able to move from ambiguous idea to prototype, evaluation, and production path quickly.
• Ability to execute full-stack AI workflows spanning data, experimentation, modeling, evaluation, APIs, deployment, and feedback loops.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with hardware teams, software engineering, ML engineering, product, operations, and leadership stakeholders.
• Excellent judgment in balancing scientific rigor, product urgency, systems constraints, safety, reliability, and customer impact.
• Clear executive-level communication; able to explain complex robotics and AI tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.

Required Technical Expertise

• Deep experience in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, perception, robotics, sensor fusion, real-time signal processing, or a closely related field.
• Experience with perception capabilities such as object detection, tracking, activity recognition, scene understanding, localization, or state estimation.
• Experience designing multimodal AI systems that combine heterogeneous data sources and reason over context, actions, and temporal signals.
• Practical knowledge of reinforcement learning, planning, sequential decision-making, robotics control interfaces, or action-conditioned model behavior.
• Strong programming capability in applicable languages such as Python and/or C++, and experience with modern ML frameworks and production-oriented software practices.
• Familiarity with APIs, SDKs, or integration patterns from commercially viable robotics platforms.

Minimum Qualifications

• 15 years of experience in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, computer vision, signal processing, statistical modeling, data mining, or a related field; OR
• Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, Physics, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field and 11 years of relevant experience; OR
• Master's degree in one of the above or related fields and 9 years of relevant experience; OR
• Doctorate in one of the above or related fields and 7 years of relevant experience.
• 7+ years of hands-on experience with Python, C++, PyTorch, and ROS for software development, machine learning, and robotics applications.
• Demonstrated technical leadership guiding teams and stakeholders toward strategic goals.

Preferred Qualifications

• 16 years of experience in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, computer vision, perception, signal processing, or related field; OR equivalent degree-based experience aligned to Oracle IC5 guidelines.
• 2 years of leadership experience with or without direct reports, including technical direction, mentoring, project planning, or cross-functional execution.
• 2 years of experience working with operating budgets and/or project financials, where applicable.
• 5+ years of experience creating technical publications, patents, white papers, peer-reviewed conference or journal articles, or equivalent technical documentation.
• Demonstrated experience delivering robotics, embodied AI, perception, or multimodal systems from research concept into production or customer-facing environments.
• Hands-on experience with commercial robot platforms, robot SDKs/APIs, simulation environments, telemetry pipelines, and real-time deployment constraints.

Success Profile

• Builds credibility as a senior applied science leader who can bridge research depth with pragmatic product delivery.
• Operates comfortably across sensors, models, APIs, hardware/software boundaries, and executive decision-making forums.
• Raises the bar for AI adoption in robotics by creating reusable patterns, evaluation standards, and scalable delivery practices.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
• Short term disability and long term disability
• Life insurance and AD&D
• Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
• 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
• Paid time off: Flexible Vacation, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, adoption assistance, etc.
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial planning and group legal
• Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

Career Level - IC5

Oracle is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Oracle will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.