Member of Technical Staff: Policy Pretraining

Walden Robotics, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Walden Robotics, Inc. seeks a Member of Technical Staff to lead policy pretraining, owning core parts of the training stack end to end and guiding experiments from idea to trustworthy results.

You will design and train policy-pretraining models, build reusable tooling, and set technical direction while mentoring MTS engineers in a fast-moving robotics ML team.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience training deep models in a modern ML framework.
• Track record of driving ambiguous, large-scale training workstreams to a result independently.
• Comfort reasoning about model behavior from data and metrics.

Responsibilities

• Model Development: Design and train policy-pretraining models, owning significant parts of the architecture and training loop.
• Experimentation: Design, run, and analyze experiments; debug training dynamics; iterate quickly.
• Pipeline & Tooling: Build reusable components and drive the efficiency and reliability of the pretraining pipeline.
• Model Analysis: Investigate model behavior from data and metrics, and turn findings into concrete improvements.
• Technical Leadership: Set technical direction for pretraining and mentor MTS engineers on the stack.

Skills

Model training

Ownership

Data-driven reasoning

Technical judgment

Leadership

Job description

Member of Technical Staff: Policy Pretraining

Position Summary:

You will lead policy pretraining—training the policies that map what a robot perceives to what it does. As a senior IC you own a core part of the pretraining stack end to end, take major training experiments from idea to trustworthy result, and set direction others build on.

Core Responsibilities:

• Model Development: Design and train policy-pretraining models, owning significant parts of the architecture and training loop.
• Experimentation: Design, run, and analyze experiments; debug training dynamics; iterate quickly.
• Pipeline & Tooling: Build reusable components and drive the efficiency and reliability of the pretraining pipeline.
• Model Analysis: Investigate model behavior from data and metrics, and turn findings into concrete improvements.
• Technical Leadership: Set technical direction for pretraining and mentor MTS engineers on the stack.

Required Qualifications:

• Model Training: Deep hands-on experience training deep models with strong engineering fundamentals in a modern ML framework.
• Ownership: A track record of driving ambiguous, large-scale training workstreams to a result independently.
• Data-Driven Reasoning: Comfort reasoning about model behavior from data and metrics rather than intuition alone.
• Technical Judgment: The judgment to make sound modeling and architecture trade-offs and set direction others follow.
• Leadership: Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical standards.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Exposure to robotics, control, imitation learning, or VLA models.
• Experience with distributed or large-scale training.
• Contributions to influential models, papers, or open-source training stacks.

Walden Robotics offers a competitive total compensation program, including salary, annual cash bonus, company equity, company-subsidized insurance programs, 401(k) with company match, flexible PTO, daily lunch, and other benefits. The pay ranges noted on our posts are for salary only.

Walden Robotics is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [e-mail].

Walden Robotics participates in E-Verify. If you receive an offer of employment from Walden, you will need to go through the E-Verify process of digital verification of your employment authorization documents as provided on the Form I-9. Participation in E-Verify does not limit your right to work and verification will only be completed after you become an employee with Walden Robotics.

At Walden Robotics, we envision a world where general-purpose robots dramatically improve the quality of life for all people—supporting us at home, at work, in factories, on farms, and beyond. To accomplish this, we are building a team of exceptional professionals who combine world-class technical skills with creative vision, grounded in humility and collaboration.