Research Scientist – Body Pose Detection

Mecka; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Mecka AI in New York is seeking a Research Scientist to architect and train foundation models for 3D human body tracking and articulated pose estimation. You will build in-house architectures, scale multi-view training, and push biomechanical priors for robust human-scene understanding.

You will leverage proprietary motion data to surpass public baselines and own the end-to-end perception loop for embodied AI, shaping models for humanoid robots and mobile manipulators in dynamic real-world

Qualifications

• Deep learning expertise in 3D vision and articulated tracking.
• Experience training large-scale vision models from scratch.
• Strong understanding of parametric body models and inverse kinematics.

Responsibilities

• Architect state-of-the-art networks for 3D pose estimation and mesh Recovery.
• Scale multi-view and temporal architectures across multi-GPU clusters.
• Develop novel loss functions enforcing biomechanical constraints and temporal smoothness.
• Lead detection and tracking of human motion in complex scenes.

Skills

Deep Learning

3D Computer Vision

Articulated Tracking

Human Body Pose Estimation

PyTorch

Large-Scale Training

Multi-GPU

Tools

PyTorch

Distributed Training

Large-Scale ML Systems

Job description

About Mecka AI

Mecka AI is building the data infrastructure layer for robotics and embodied AI.

About Mecka AI

Mecka AI is building the data infrastructure layer for robotics and embodied AI.

We design and operate global systems for data capture, data labeling, and hardware-enabled workflows used by leading AI labs and robotics companies to train and validate humanoid and embodied AI systems.

We work closely with frontier robotics teams to bridge real-world data, simulation, learning-based systems, and deployed hardware.

The Role

While our existing perception division handles state estimation and spatial mapping, this role is dedicated to one of the most critical bottlenecks in embodied AI: full-body kinematics, human locomotion, and human-scene interaction. We are hiring a Research Scientist to architect and train proprietary foundation models from scratch focused on 3D human body tracking and articulated pose estimation.

Your core mandate is twofold: building our in-house equivalents to cutting-edge 3D human body and mesh recovery architectures, and developing highly robust interaction models tailored for complex, real-world environments characterized by severe occlusions and dynamic motion. Beyond these core pillars, you will serve as a lead problem-solver for emergent perception challenges as our hardware and downstream robotics needs evolve.

To achieve this, we can provide a massive, continuous stream of high-quality, proprietary ground-truth human motion data captured by our infrastructure. You will use this data advantage to train networks that surpass current public baselines, owning the complete human-scene perception loop for our data engine.

What You'll Work On

Architecting Proprietary Articulation Models

• Zero-to-One Model Development: Design, implement, and train state-of-the-art networks for 3D human pose estimation, dense full-body mesh recovery, and kinematic tracking.
• Large-Scale Distributed Training: Scale multi-view and temporal ML architectures across multi-GPU clusters to handle massive, multi-modal datasets of humans navigating and interacting with their environments.
• Loss & Architecture Innovation: Push the boundaries of current paradigms by developing novel loss functions that enforce biomechanical constraints, temporal smoothness, postural balance, and physical plausibility.

Human-Scene Interaction (HSI) & Complex Motion Modeling

• Dynamic Scene Understanding: Build and train custom architectures capable of handling extreme motion blur, severe self-occlusion, and multi-person crowding inherent in real-world human behavior.
• Allocentric & Egocentric Tracking: Use your models to track human bodies through complex spaces, mapping foot-to-ground contact, joint torques, and environmental affordances to provide rich regularization for downstream action-conditioned robotics models (especially humanoid robots).

Emergent Perception R&D

• Rapid Prototyping: Tackle novel, unmapped AI challenges as they arise. You will rapidly prototype and deploy new models for tasks spanning fine-grained action segmentation, intent prediction, and novel hardware sensor integrations.
• Agile Problem Solving: Pivot to resolve sudden algorithmic bottlenecks in the data engine, adapting the latest research to unblock new product capabilities for our robotics customers.

Dense Contact & Physics-Aware Tracking

• Interaction Integration: Connect the outputs of your foundational tracking models into highly optimized pipelines that reason about physical contact surfaces, gravity, and momentum, directly bridging the gap between human video data and robotic control/locomotion policies.

What You Bring

Required Background

• Deep expertise in Deep Learning, 3D Computer Vision, and specifically Articulated Tracking / Human Body Pose Estimation.
• Proven experience training large-scale vision models from scratch, not just running inference or fine-tuning existing checkpoints.
• Strong theoretical and practical understanding of parametric human body models (e.g., SMPL, SMPL-X, GHUM, MHR, SOMA-X), inverse kinematics, and dense mesh estimation.
• Mastery of PyTorch and deep learning scaling frameworks.
• Experience handling and curating massive, multi-terabyte image and video datasets for training.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment where priorities can shift rapidly to capitalize on new research or hardware capabilities.

Strong Signals:

• First-author publications in top-tier venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS) focusing on 3D human pose tracking, human-scene interaction (HSI), human motion capture, or human mesh recovery.
• Specific experience working with massive human motion and interaction datasets (e.g., AMASS, Human3.6M, EgoBody, PROX) and solving the unique optimization challenges they present.

Why This Role?

• The Data Advantage: You will have access to a scale and quality of proprietary spatial and temporal ground truth for human motion that most academic researchers only dream of.
• Pure R&D & Model Ownership: You are not maintaining legacy systems; you are given a blank slate and the compute resources to build the state-of-the-art.
• High Impact: The kinematic priors and interaction models you architect will directly define how the next generation of embodied AI agents—from mobile manipulators to humanoid robots—learn to physically navigate, balance, and interact with the world.

Warning:

Research Scientist positions require hyper-specific expertise. Please limit your applications to one research role. Applying to multiple Research Scientist positions suggests a lack of focus and may result in the rejection of all submissions. You may, however, apply to other non-research roles alongside your research application.

A Note on Applying

Studies show women and candidates from underrepresented groups often only apply when they meet 100% of the listed qualifications, while others apply after meeting 60%. If you don't check every box above but believe you can do the job, we encourage you to apply — we're looking for capability and trajectory, not a perfect checklist match.

Inclusive Hiring at Mecka

We are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive candidate experience. Should you require any accommodation whatsoever during the interview process, please inform us without any hesitation. Mecka is dedicated to ensuring equal treatment and opportunity in all phases of recruitment, selection, and employment, in compliance with employment law. We do not discriminate based on gender, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other protected category. Mecka is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, fostering a culture of inclusivity and maintaining a work environment that is free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment

Mecka uses artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly to support administrative and efficiency-focused aspects of our recruitment process. This includes activities such as drafting job descriptions, generating interview questions, note-taking and recordings, and supporting sourcing and scheduling workflows. All candidate evaluations, interviews, and hiring decisions are made by members of the Mecka team. While AI tools may assist with screening and assessment, they do not replace human judgment in selection decisions. Our use of AI is intended to streamline routine tasks, improve consistency, and enhance the overall candidate experience. We are committed to upholding principles of fairness, transparency, and accountability in all hiring activities. Mecka regularly reviews its recruitment practices to mitigate bias and to ensure alignment with applicable laws and evolving best practices.

Compensation Range: $150K - $200K