Research Engineer

Human Archive; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Human Archive is looking for a Research Engineer in San Francisco to work on multimodal sensing systems. You will evaluate sensor technologies and design experiments impacting robotics performance. If you hold a Master's/PhD in relevant fields and have research experience in sensor fusion or embodied AI, this is your chance to join a cutting-edge team.

This role emphasizes collaboration with hardware and machine learning teams, aiming to transform physical labor markets through advanced research in human embodied intelligence.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in robotics, computer vision, or sensing systems.
• Published research in sensor fusion or embodied AI.
• Experience with various sensor modalities.
• Comfortable with real-world robot deployments.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate how sensor modalities impact robotics performance.
• Design experiments for synchronization, calibration, and fusion.
• Collaborate with hardware and ML teams.
• Prototype quickly using real-world feedback.

Skills

Technical intuition in hardware systems

Understanding of robot learning

Experience with sensor fusion

Experience with multimodal datasets

Proficiency in reinforcement learning

Experience with RGB-D video

Experience with motion capture

Experience with tactile sensing

Experience with wearable systems

Education

Master’s or PhD in robotics, computer vision, or related fields

Job description

About Human Archive

Human Archive is a research lab backed by Y Combinator focused on modeling human embodied intelligence.

Humans are the most sophisticated biological systems we have ever observed, yet we still do not fully understand ourselves. Research into human physical intelligence — including the human hand, proprioception, and vision — remains largely unsolved. Our mission is to recover human embodied intelligence as a learned model. To achieve this, we build custom hardware products, deploy them globally at scale, and publish research. Today, our data is used for robotics and world modeling, but the broader opportunity is advancing scientific research into intelligence itself.

Founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers, we are lean, deeply technical, and operate at extreme speed, taking on unglamorous and conventionally impossible problems that directly unlock step-function gains in model capability.

The deployment of capable humanoids at scale will permanently redefine human labor. Undesirable physical work will disappear, and human effort will shift toward a new era of abundant creativity.

We are building the infrastructure to accelerate that transition by assembling the Human Archive mafia. You will own meaningful systems from day one and see your work directly impact model capabilities. This is a once-in-a-generation inflection point. If you want to help reshape physical labor and work on problems that matter at civilizational scale, join us.

The Opportunity

As a Research Engineer, you’ll work on multimodal sensing systems and sensor fusion research for embodied AI and robotics. This role sits at the intersection of robotics, perception, hardware systems, and machine learning, where your work directly shapes how multimodal data is collected, synchronized, fused, and used for downstream VLA training.

You’ll research emerging sensing technologies across RGB-D video, motion capture, IMUs, tactile sensing, audio, and wearable systems, and study how different sensor combinations impact robot learning, policy performance, and generalization. You’ll work closely with hardware, ML, and research teams to design experiments, evaluate new sensing stacks, and help define the next generation of multimodal robotics datasets.

Your work will help shape how frontier labs and leading robotics companies train their models, transforming physical labor markets and economies while contributing to broader research into human embodied intelligence.

What You’ll Do

• Evaluate how different sensor modalities impact VLA training and downstream robotics performance

• Work across RGB-D video, IMUs, motion capture, tactile sensing, audio, and wearable systems data

• Design experiments around synchronization, calibration, fusion, and multimodal alignment

• Prototype quickly and iterate from real-world robotics deployments and research feedback

• Collaborate closely with hardware, ML, and research teams on next-generation sensing systems

What We’re Looking For

• Master’s or PhD in robotics, computer vision, sensing systems, or related fields

• Published research in sensor fusion, perception systems, multimodal datasets, or embodied AI

• Strong technical intuition around hardware systems and robot learning

• Experience with RGB-D video, IMUs, motion capture, tactile sensing, or robotics systems

• Experience with reinforcement learning, real-world robot deployments, and how data impacts downstream policy performance

• Highly curious, execution-oriented, and comfortable operating from first principles