Research Scientist

Rainfall Ventures; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Publishing support for robotics/ML conferences

Medical, dental, and vision plans

Daily meals stipend

Job summary

Rainfall Ventures in San Francisco is searching for an innovative engineer to design and develop robot autonomy software, focusing on advanced machine learning algorithms for dexterous behaviors. Candidates must hold a Master's or PhD in a relevant field and have significant ML expertise.

The role features exciting opportunities to advance research while bridging theoretical knowledge with practical applications. The ideal candidate has over 3 years in ML systems deployment and offers a salary range of $120,000 to $250,000 annually plus benefits.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in machine learning fundamentals and reinforcement learning.
• 3+ years of experience developing and deploying ML systems.
• Hands-on experience in model lifecycle management including training and deployment.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop robot autonomy software stack.
• Research and implement robot learning policies.
• Build high-speed robot autonomy software stack.

Skills

Machine Learning

Robotics

Reinforcement Learning

Software Development

Education

Master’s/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Ray

Job description

What you’ll do

• Design and develop robot autonomy software stack and algorithms to enable capabilities including grasping and more dexterous behaviors in unstructured environments
• Research and implement state-of-the-art robot learning policies, including reinforcement learning and imitation learning-based techniques
• Build reliable, high-speed robot autonomy software stack optimized for inference performance
• Design and maintain robust data collection and curation pipelines for production robot fleets
• Optimize robot policies for distributed training at scale and real-time edge deployment
• Ship production quality, safety-critical software

Required Qualifications

• Master’s/PhD degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or equivalent technical discipline
• Deep expertise in machine learning fundamentals, reinforcement learning, and associated frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Ray, etc.)
• 3+ years of proven track record developing and deploying ML systems from research through production implementation
• Hands‑on experience with model lifecycle management including training, deployment, and maintenance in production settings

Preferred Qualifications

• Authored or co‑authored peer‑reviewed publications in robotics or related fields
• Hands‑on experience designing and implementing bimanual manipulation tech stacks with imitation learning or RL-based methods
• Background in real‑time ML inference systems, simulation‑to‑reality transfer, or advanced reinforcement learning implementations

Benefits

• We support publishing at top robotics/ML venues and presenting at conferences (travel + time fully covered).
• Advance SOTA dexterous manipulation research through novel methodologies while bridging theory & practice—real customer use‑cases with clear success criteria.
• Medical, dental & vision plans
• Daily meals stipend

Expected Compensation

• $120,000 - $250,000 annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits