Model Evaluation Program Manager

Dyna Robotics; Redwood City (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Dyna Robotics is seeking a Model Evaluation Lead to head the team that assesses how our robot policies perform and whether new model versions improve capabilities. You will manage, plan, and execute evaluations, working closely with researchers to define tests, scores, and learnings.

This hands-on leadership role blends people management, experimental rigor, and technical judgment to ensure results are trustworthy and actionable for deployment decisions.

Qualifications

• Experience in robotics, ML, applied research, or model evaluation with ownership of evaluation design and analysis.
• Demonstrated experience managing and developing a technical team, including setting priorities and giving feedback.
• Strong experimental judgment: define success, control variables, identify gaps, assess meaningful improvements.

Responsibilities

• Manage workflows and priorities for the evaluation team.
• Collaborate with researchers to translate questions into evaluation plans and hypotheses.
• Design task definitions, scoring rubrics, and test scenarios reflecting real operating conditions.
• Make results repeatable and trustworthy with standardized setups and logs.
• Turn failures into actionable findings by distinguishing model vs hardware or setup issues.
• Own regression coverage and reporting across tasks and model versions.
• Improve evaluation tools and workflows with automation and dashboards.

Skills

Robotics experience

Machine learning

Team leadership

Experimental judgment

Technical writing

Communication

Tools

Python

Job description

Dyna Robotics builds general-purpose robots powered by a proprietary embodied AI foundation model with top-in-industry generalization and real-world performance. Already deployed with customers across multiple industries, our robots do commercial-grade work in the physical world. Our team comes from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Cruise, and we're backed by CRV, First Round, and other leading investors.

The Role

Dyna Robotics is building general-purpose robots that perform useful work in real-world environments. We’re looking for a Model Evaluation Lead to lead the team responsible for understanding how our robot policies perform and whether new model versions deliver meaningful improvements.

You’ll manage and develop the evaluation team, own evaluation planning and execution, and work closely with researchers to define what we test, how we measure it, and what we learn. This is a hands‑on leadership role combining people management, experimental rigor, and technical judgment. Your work will help researchers understand model behavior, prioritize improvements, and assess readiness for deployment.

What You'll Do

• Manage work flows for the evaluation team. Manage the team’s priorities. Establish clear ownership, provide regular coaching and feedback, and build onboarding and training practices that help team members execute evaluations and investigate issues independently.

• Work closely with researchers. Translate research questions into evaluation plans with clear hypotheses, success criteria, and deliverables. Partner with researchers to compare model checkpoints, assess new capabilities, and balance recurring evaluations with urgent experiments and available robot capacity.

• Design meaningful evaluations. Develop task definitions, scoring rubrics, and test scenarios that reflect real operating conditions. Measure task success, output quality, cycle time, human interventions, and recovery behavior. Choose appropriate trial counts and account for variability when interpreting results.

• Make results repeatable and trustworthy. Standardize setup, resets, scoring, and intervention rules. Ensure results are traceable to model versions, robot configurations, test conditions, logs, and videos. Coordinate with hardware and operations partners to resolve issues that affect evaluation quality.

• Turn failures into actionable findings. Review robot behavior, logs, and video with the team and researchers. Distinguish model failures from hardware, software, setup, or execution issues. Identify recurring failure patterns and recommend focused investigations, additional data collection, or annotation improvements.

• Own regression coverage and reporting. Maintain consistent benchmarks and held‑out test scenarios across tasks and conditions. Identify regressions, track progress across model versions, and communicate what improved, what remains unreliable, and where evidence is still limited. Provide clear recommendations that inform deployment decisions.

• Improve evaluation tools and workflows. Use data analysis and lightweight scripting to improve reporting and reduce manual work. Partner with engineering on evaluation tooling, automation, and dashboards. Shorten the time from a new checkpoint to useful findings while preserving the quality of the evidence.

What You'll Bring

• Experience in robotics, machine learning, applied research, or model evaluation, with direct ownership of evaluation design and analysis.

• Demonstrated experience managing and developing a technical team, including setting priorities, giving feedback, and building effective working practices.

• Strong experimental judgment: you can define success, control relevant variables, identify gaps in test coverage, and assess whether an apparent improvement is meaningful.

• Technical fluency to work directly with researchers on model checkpoints, generalization, data quality, and experimental tradeoffs.

• Comfort using Python or similar tools to analyze results, inspect logs, and improve evaluation workflows.

• Clear communication and strong ownership. You can turn an ambiguous request into an executable plan, surface problems early, and explain findings to both research and operations teams.

Bonus Points For

• Evaluating robot manipulation policies, embodied AI, autonomous systems, or other machine learning systems operating in the physical world.

• Building regression suites, benchmark datasets, failure taxonomies, or evaluation tools, and connecting findings to model development or deployment readiness.

At Dyna Robotics, we build technology for the real world, which requires a team as diverse as the environments our robots inhabit. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to technical rigor and mutual respect.

Don’t let a checklist stop you. Data shows that underrepresented groups often only apply if they meet 100% of the criteria. We value problem-solving and grit over keyword matching. If you’re passionate about robotics, no matter your discipline, we want to hear from you, even if you don't check every box.