PRINCIPAL RESEARCH SCIENTIST

Foxglove Technologies Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Foxglove Technologies Inc. is seeking a Principal Research Scientist to develop AI models for autonomy solutions within robotics. This role involves collaborating with teams to bridge research and production, shaping the future of robotics innovation. Ideal candidates will have significant experience in robotics and machine learning, as well as a passion for driving impactful solutions.

Benefits

300 monthly remote budget

Competitive equity grant

401k matching for US employees

4 weeks vacation plus holidays

All expenses paid company off-sites 2x / year

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in robotics and machine learning.
• PhD or equivalent required.
• Strong expertise in deep learning for physical systems.

Responsibilities

• Develop AI models for autonomy challenges.
• Define and drive the Physical AI roadmap.
• Collaborate with CEO and sales teams for product evaluation.

Skills

Deep learning techniques

Robotics

Machine learning

Customer collaboration

Technical communication

Model deployment

Research evaluation

Startup environment adaptation

Education

PhD or equivalent research experience

Job description

Robotics will have a massive positive impact on the world economy and global human productivity over the coming decade. At Foxglove, were excited for this future, and were building powerful open source and commercial tools to accelerate it.

Were an experienced team of independent thinkers, with a passion for creating high quality products. Were looking for self-motivated and fast-learning individuals to join our mission.

About the role

At Foxglove, we’re on a mission to empower the next wave of robotics innovation by providing developers with cutting-edge tools to build, test, and deploy advanced robotic systems. As the robotics industry matures, we believe most companies building autonomy solutions will shift from developing in-house to adopting off-the-shelf AI models — similar to the transformation weve seen with LLMs.

Were seeking a Principal Research Scientist to develop generalizable AI models to solve autonomy challenges across a broad range of customer needs. Youll define and drive our Physical AI roadmap, bridging cutting-edge research with production requirements, and build a world-class team of applied AI and robotics engineers.

You’ll collaborate closely with our CEO, sales, and product teams to evaluate commercial opportunities, design and deploy state-of-the-art models to production, and hire a world-class team to deliver real-world impact for our customers. This is an exciting opportunity to shape a critical new pillar of Foxglove’s future and advance the state of autonomy for robotics developers worldwide.

Location

We’re a small, fully remote, global company with team members primarily in the U.S. and Australia. We maintain Pacific Time hours and hire within ±4 hours of U.S. time zones to ensure effective collaboration.

For this role, we’re seeking someone based in San Francisco, in office 3–5 days per week, to support hands-on work with hardware and in-person collaboration with local customers.

What were looking for

• 5+ years of experience in robotics and machine learning-related fields
• PhD or equivalent research experience
• Understanding of recent advances in end-to-end autonomy
• Deep expertise in modern deep learning techniques, especially for perception, decision-making, and / or control in physical systems
• Experience collaborating closely with customers and internal product and sales teams to define and drive product roadmaps
• Strong ability to evaluate research for real-world application and translate cutting-edge methods into production systems
• Hands-on technical skills — comfortable building model pipelines, debugging infrastructure, and contributing directly to codebases
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including ability to present technical work to both expert and non-expert audiences
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment and work cross-functionally across teams
• Experience working in applied autonomy or robotics startups
• Track record of research contributions to large-scale robotics foundation models (e.g., RT-style systems)
• Experience building scalable training and evaluation pipelines for real-world deployment
• Experience owning model performance from research prototype to production deployment
• Experience with cross-functional partnership development or commercialization of robotics research

What we offer

• For this role we offer $200,000 to $240,000 salary
• Work remotely
• 300 monthly remote budget to build your personal workspace
• Competitive equity grant in a Series A company
• Competitive Medical coverage, Dental / Vision plans (US & Canada)
• 401k matching (US full time employees only)
• 4 weeks vacation, plus holidays and winter break
• All expenses paid company off-sites 2x / year

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Principal Scientist • San Francisco, CA, United States