Research Engineer, Robotics - Roboticist

Ai2; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision benefits

401k plan

Commuting stipend

Fitness and wellbeing stipend

Paid time off

Job summary

Ai2's Robotics team in Seattle seeks a hands‑on controls expert to own the real‑time control stack for torque‑controlled arms, hands and humanoids. You will tune impedance and operational‑space control, ensure safety, and integrate learned policies with hardware across multiple embodiments.

You will collaborate with researchers and simulation teams to translate simulation results into reliable hardware behavior, while leading hardware design, testing and deployment efforts across projects at Ai2.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in robotics, controls or a related field with 3+ years of experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and own the real‑time control stack for arms, hands, and humanoids.
• Tune and stabilize whole‑body controllers for humanoids and bimanual systems.
• Lead setup, calibration, and maintenance of robots across platforms.
• Diagnose stability, latency and contact issues using system models and data.
• Design hardware components from CAD to test rigs for lab needs.
• Develop runtime tooling for teleoperation, data collection, and deployment.
• Contribute to open‑source releases and publications.

Skills

Real-time control

Whole-body control

Robot manipulation

Python

C++

CAD

PyTorch

ROS 2

Debugging full stack

Education

Master’s degree in robotics or related field

Bachelor’s degree + 3+ years industry experience

Tools

ROSB 2

DDS/Zenoh

Real-time Linux

CI/CD

SolidWorks/ Fusion 360 / Onshape

Job description

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On‑site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on‑site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Our base salary range is $128,880 - $193,320, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

Who You Are:

You will own the control stack on our physical robots and the path from simulation to them. This is first and foremost a controls role: you will bring up and tune real‑time, torque-level control on arms, multi‑fingered hands, bimanual systems and humanoids, make it stable and safe enough that researchers run experiments on hardware every day, and build the interfaces that learned policies plug into. Experience with humanoid whole‑body control and with Unitree platforms (G1, H1 and similar) is a strong plus, as humanoid and whole‑body work is a growing share of the lab. You will also design and build the hardware the research needs, from end‑effectors to test rigs. You will work closely with research scientists and the simulation team so that what is learned in simulation shows up as reliable behaviour on hardware.

Who We Are:

The Robotics team at Ai2, led by Dieter Fox, uses scalable simulation to study how foundation models scale and generalize for robotics. We focus on manipulation, humanoid and whole‑body control, large‑scale simulated training, sim‑to‑real transfer, robot foundation models and skill learning. We publish at CoRL, ICRA, RSS, CVPR, NeurIPS, ICLR and ICML, and everything we build is open source.

Your Next Challenge:

• Build and own the real‑time control stack: joint, impedance, operational‑space and torque control on torque‑controlled arms, hands and humanoids, with motion planning, safety layers and the interfaces that learned policies plug into, across embodiments.
• Bring up, tune and stabilize whole‑body controllers for humanoids and bimanual systems: QP‑based or MPC‑based whole‑body control, state estimation (IMU, encoders, force/torque), contact handling and fall or fault recovery, and the sim‑to‑real transfer of learned locomotion and loco‑manipulation policies.
• Lead the setup, calibration, maintenance and tuning of our robots: arms, grippers, multi‑fingered hands, humanoids, cameras and tactile sensors, across single‑arm, bimanual, mobile and legged platforms.
• Diagnose stability, latency and contact problems across hardware, firmware, control and learned policy, using system identification and dynamics models to turn algorithms into reliable real‑world behaviour.
• Design and build the hardware the lab needs: end‑effectors, fingertips, sensor mounts, fixtures and test rigs, from CAD through 3D printing or machining, including integrating cameras, tactile sensors and hands.
• Build the runtime and tooling around the robots: teleoperation and data collection, logging, monitoring, deployment and operator‑facing tools, so the platform scales across robots, tasks and people.
• Contribute to open‑source releases and publications.

What You’ll Need:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s with 3+ years of experience, or PhD, in robotics, control or a related field. Strong candidates with a bachelor’s and 3+ years of industry experience are also considered.
• Controls: you have implemented and tuned real‑time controllers (joint, impedance, operational‑space or torque control) on physical robots, with a solid grounding in rigid‑body dynamics, control theory, stability analysis and system identification. You can explain why a controller went unstable and fix it.
• Whole‑body and floating‑base control: you understand floating‑base dynamics, contact constraints and inverse dynamics, and have worked with at least one of QP‑based whole‑body control, operational‑space control or MPC, on hardware or in a high‑fidelity simulator.
• Manipulation: substantial hands‑on experience with real‑robot manipulation, including bring‑up, calibration and control of arms with grippers or hands.
• System design: you have designed robot software systems end to end (control loops at 500 Hz to 1 kHz, state estimation, data flow, and the interfaces between planning, perception and learning) and can reason about latency, reliability and failure modes. Strong Python; solid real‑time C++.
• Mechanical design: you have designed and built hardware that was used on a real robot, such as end‑effectors, mounts, fixtures or rigs. CAD required (SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape or similar), with design‑for‑manufacturing experience for 3D printing or machining.
• Robot learning: you have trained or deployed learned policies (imitation learning, RL or VLA) on real robots, and are comfortable with PyTorch and at least one simulation ecosystem (Isaac Lab, MuJoCo or similar).
• Debugging across the full stack, from perception through control to hardware, and clear communication with a structured, systems‑oriented approach.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong plus: humanoid whole‑body control on hardware, including locomotion, loco‑manipulation, balance and contact‑rich tasks, and hands‑on experience bringing up and deploying on Unitree platforms (G1, H1 or similar) or comparable humanoids.
• Depth in control theory: Lyapunov and passivity‑based methods, contact‑stable and compliant control, dynamical‑systems approaches to motion generation, and reduced‑order models (centroidal dynamics, SRBD, LIPM), with experience applying them on hardware.
• Sim‑to‑real for whole‑body policies: training RL locomotion or loco‑manipulation policies in GPU‑accelerated simulators (Isaac Lab, MuJoCo Warp) and getting them to run stably on a real humanoid, including domain randomization, actuator modelling and safety wrappers.
• Whole‑body state estimation and sensor fusion (IMU, joint encoders, force/torque, contact estimation, Kalman filtering).
• Experience with bimanual systems, multi‑fingered hands or tactile sensing.
• Teleoperation systems (VR, leader‑follower arms, hand and body tracking, whole‑body retargeting) and large‑scale data collection.
• Robotics middleware and infrastructure: ROS 2, DDS or Zenoh, real‑time Linux, containerization, CI/CD.
• Hand‑eye and multi‑camera calibration, depth sensing and 3D perception on hardware.
• Open‑source contributions or publications at robotics venues (CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, Humanoids).

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

A Little More About Ai2:

Ai2 is a Seattle based non‑profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world’s biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real‑world impact through large‑scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

In addition to Ai2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything Ai2 does is ground‑breaking, we are learning every day. With a wide variety of world‑class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on‑going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non‑binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly– chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in E‑Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I‑9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E‑Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E‑Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I‑9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at [e-mail].

Benefits:

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short‑term disability, long‑term disability, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long‑term incentive plan.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job‑related instructions and to perform any other job‑related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at‑will relationship.