Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Engineer

Runway; New York (NY); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Runway is seeking a Robotics Engineer to deploy foundation models onto real hardware. You'll be responsible for implementing learned policies on robots, diagnosing real-world issues, and designing data collection protocols.

The ideal candidate should have experience in deploying software on physical robots and navigating software-hardware interfaces. This position is based in New York City, with the option to relocate. Join us to innovate at the intersection of AI and robotics.

Qualifications

• Experience deploying software on real robot hardware.
• Fluency in action/command spaces and control frequencies.
• Ability to work at the intersection of software and physical systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the deployment loop for learned policies on real robots.
• Diagnose and fix real-world policy failures.
• Design protocols for demonstration data collection.

Skills

Robot hardware deployment

Software-to-robot interface

Policy failures diagnosis

Multimodal generative models

Job description

We are building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science.

We believe that world models are at the frontier of progress in artificial intelligence. Language models alone won’t solve the world’s hardest problems – robotics, disease, scientific discovery. Real progress requires models that experience the world and learn from their mistakes, the same way that humans do. And this kind of trial and error can be massively accelerated when done in simulation, rather than in the real world.

World models offer the most clear path to general‑purpose simulation, changing how stories are told, how scientific progress is made and how the next frontiers of humanity are reached.

Our team consists of creative, open‑minded, caring and ambitious people who are determined to change the world. We aspire to continuously build impossible things and our ability to do so relies on building an incredible team. If you are driven to do the same, we'd love to hear from you.

About the role

*Open to candidates based near our NYC office or those willing to relocate.

Building general world models — systems that understand and simulate reality across tasks, modalities, and domains — requires closing the loop between learned representations and real‑world action. We're looking for a Robotics Engineer to bring our video‑native foundation models onto real hardware: deploying world‑model‑based policies on real robots and making them work in the real world.

You will work across the full stack of robot learning — from data collection and task design, to policy deployment, to physical evaluation. This is a hands‑on, execution‑oriented role at the intersection of foundation models, learned robot policies, and hardware. You'll bring deep robotics domain expertise and help us ship world‑model‑based robot policies end‑to‑end, with applications ranging from manipulation to mobile robotics.

What you’ll do

• Own the deployment loop for learned policies (VLAs, diffusion policies, World Action Models) on real robot arms: inference serving, action decoding, controller integration, latency budgets, and safety limits
• Diagnose real‑world policy failures — determining whether the problem is data coverage, camera/proprioception mismatch, or execution — and partner with the research team to fix it at the right layer
• Design demonstration data collection protocols (task setup, camera placement, teleop conventions) that produce data our world models can actually learn from — working with our existing teleop and lab infrastructure
• Partner with research to run controlled experiments connecting world model representations, data composition, and fine‑tuning recipes to physical success rates
• Define and run physical evaluation protocols so results are trustworthy and comparable across policy iterations
• Adapt our policy recipe to partner hardware and new embodiments

What you’ll need

• You have personally deployed software on real robot hardware and iterated to make it work — whether learned policies, motion planning, classical control, or perception‑driven manipulation. You can walk through a specific system you shipped, what broke on the physical robot that didn't break in sim or testing, and how you fixed it.
• Fluency in the software‑to‑robot interface: action/command spaces, control frequencies, observation pipelines, calibration, and how each affects real‑world behavior
• Comfort working at the intersection of software and physical systems: you can reconfigure a robot workspace and trace a policy failure in the same afternoon
• Bonus: direct experience deploying learned policies (VLAs, diffusion policies) on real hardware; experience with video/multimodal generative models or world models

Runway strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on competitive market rates for our size, stage and industry, and salary is just one part of the overall compensation package we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.

Working at Runway

Great things come from great teams. We’d love to hear from you.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. So regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply.