Research Engineer, Robot Intelligence

Samsungresearchamerica; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Samsung Research America's Robot Intelligence Lab is hiring Researcher Engineers across Senior levels to advance robotics and embodied intelligence for real-world tasks.

Ideal candidates hold a PhD or Master’s in EECS/Robotics with extensive robotics R&D, perception, control, and learning experience, and are proficient with PyTorch, TensorFlow, C++, ROS, and CUDA. The role offers challenging technical challenges with broad impact.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master's degree in EECS/Robotics or equivalent experience.
• Experience in state-of-the-art robotics R&D and perception/control.
• Strong software engineering practices and written/verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Design and evaluate robotic hardware, sensors, and software for complex environments.
• Integrate components into prototypes and optimize system performance.
• Develop and test algorithms for perception, control, learning, navigation, and manipulation.
• Create simulations and real data pipelines for model management.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and document results clearly.
• Conduct experiments to benchmark algorithms with well-defined metrics.
• Maintain fleets and infrastructure for logging and evaluation.
• Present results to stakeholders and drive iterative improvement.
• Support cross-domain collaboration with external partners.

Skills

Task-and-motion planning

Vision-language-action models

3D perception

Reinforcement learning

Robotics control

Multimodal information fusion

SLAM

Education

PhD or Master's in EECS/Robotics

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

C++

ROS

CUDA

Job description

Lab Summary: The Robot Intelligence Lab at Samsung Research America is a new facility dedicated to advancing the field of robotics through cutting-edge research and development. The lab's mission is to develop advanced technologies to power intelligent robotic systems capable of manipulation, navigation, and complex reasoning for a variety of high-impact application areas. To achieve this mission, the lab collaborates closely with external entities such as universities, startups, and government labs, as well as with several Samsung Product and Advanced Research labs.

Position Summary: As the Robot Intelligence Lab grows, we will be hiring across multiple career levels including Senior, Staff and Senior Staff. The level at which a candidate is hired will reflect their experience, technical expertise and demonstrated impact.

Regardless of level we are looking to grow the team with Researcher Engineers who have solid technical skills and rich academic and/or industry experience in areas of robotics and embodied intelligence. Our ideal candidate explores novel technologies aimed towards generalizing robots to perform tasks in the real world. Samsung's unique advantage in the consumer electronics market and growing focus on AI and robotics will provide you with exciting technical challenges and a rewarding career experience. By leveraging Samsung's vast product ecosystem to deliver novel user experiences, your work will define Samsung's future in robotics and significantly impact real-world users.

Position Responsibilities:

• Design and evaluate the suitability of robotic hardware, sensors, and software for applications in semi-structured and unstructured environments targeting high impact business areas
• Integrate sensors, actuators and other component into proof-of-concept/prototype robotic systems and analyze and optimize robotic system performance and accuracy
• Design, develop, integrate and test algorithms for robot perception, control, learning, navigation, and manipulation
• Synthesize virtual models (simulations) of appearance, kinematics, and physics of real robots and environments using system identification, real-to-sim, scene generation, and sim-to-real techniques
• Develop and deploy data collection, data processing, and model management mechanisms for in-the wild data aggregation
• Work within cross-functional, cross-divisional teams and assist in the design, analysis and performance evaluation from concept to completion
• Document and present results evaluating algorithms and models on targeted compute platforms
• Conduct pilot studies and formal experiments to benchmark performance against state-of-the-art approaches using clear and well-reasoned metrics
• Maintain fleets of robots and associated infrastructure for logging, monitoring, and evaluating performance across the fleet

Required Skills:

• PhD or Master's degree in EECS/Robotics or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience
• 2-14+ years' experience in state-of-the-art robotics R&D, such as task-and-motion planning (TAMP), vision-language-action (VLA) models, open-world 3D perception, trajectory prediction, model predictive control, large-scale reinforcement learning, multimodal (visual, tactile, audio, semantic) information fusion, and whole-body control
• Demonstrated experience in sensing, kinematics, dynamics, and control systems integrated on real robotic systems
• Solid understanding of computer vision techniques (e.g., object detection, segmentation, tracking) and multi-view image processing
• Knowledgeable of tools and processes to monitor ML model performance and data quality, including model tuning experience
• Familiarity with PyTorch, TensorFlow, C++, ROS, and CUDA
• Demonstrated experience in software engineering best practices to track, communicate, and document project progress
• Strong understanding of robotics fundamentals, including locomotion, manipulation, sensor inputs, pose tracking, 3D mapping, SLAM, ROS, and policy architectures particularly for semi-structured and unstructured environments
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Excellent verbal communication and writing skills to effectively represent the derived results and technical concepts developed in the course of the work

Please note, "Base Pay Range" below is reflective of all levels and positions considered for this posting. Our total rewards programs are designed to motivate and engage exceptional talent. The base pay range for roles at this level is listed below, but may be higher or lower in other states due to geographic differentials in the labor market. Within the base pay range, individual rates depend on a number of factors-including the role's function and location as wel