Research Scientist- Robotics AI

Bosch; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

Bosch Group's North America RTC focuses on advanced AI for embodied and cyber-physical systems, including autonomous robotics and factory automation. The role centers on research in vision, navigation, manipulation, and robust system integration for industrial settings.

Ideal candidates bring a Ph.D. or Master's with industry experience, strong ML/vision skills, and a track record of publications. The job is based in Sunnyvale, CA with a competitive salary and benefits package.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in CS, robotics or related field; or master's with 2+ years industry experience.
• 5+ years of R&D in AI, CV, robotics, or automotive motion planning.
• Proficiency in Python, C++, Rust.
• Strong communication and teamwork skills.
• Experience with TensorFlow or PyTorch.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research and engineering in core AI and ML to enable industrial embodied AI across manufacturing, logistics, and handling domains.
• Push boundaries in robotics using multimodal models for real-time factory reasoning and safety.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with manufacturing engineering, plant operations, and product teams for technology transfer.
• Implement research results to solve industrial challenges with high-reliability system integration.
• Engage with industry consortia and conferences focused on industrial robotics and automation.
• Document findings via publications, white papers, and patent submissions.

Skills

Interpersonal skills

Communication

Teamwork

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science/Robotics

Master's with 2+ years post-grad experience

Tools

Python

C++

Rust

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

The Bosch Research and Technology Center North America with offices in Sunnyvale, California, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Cambridge, Massachusetts is a part of the global Bosch Group (www.bosch.com), a company with over 70 billion euro revenue, 400,000 employees worldwide, a very diverse product portfolio, and a history spanning over 125 years. The Research and Technology Center North America (RTC-NA) is dedicated to providing technologies and system solutions for various Bosch business fields, primarily in the field of artificial intelligence, energy technologies, internet technologies, circuit design, semiconductors and wireless, as well as advanced MEMS design.

As a part of the global research, our AI research in Silicon Valley focuses on Foundation Models, Big Data Visual Analytics, Explainable AI (XAI), Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision & Mixed Reality, Cloud Robotics, Data Science, AI System Engineering, Time-series Analysis. We develop scalable, intelligent, and trustworthy AIoT solutions for Bosch products and services in application areas such as automated driving, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics, smart manufacturing, enterprise AI, health care, smart home and building solutions.

Originating from the AI research in Silicon Valley, our Intelligent Autonomous Systems group is responsible for enabling future autonomous Bosch products by pushing the boundaries of automated driving, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics and automation through key innovations that encompass system architecture and AI components. These include methods for motion planning, high level task planning and decision making as well as systems for making these technologies work on real products by building frameworks that take advantage of technologies in the field of reliable distributed computing. We work with internal partners of different Bosch business units to transfer our solutions into future products. We also actively collaborate with leading groups in academia and industry to promote research ideas and publish research findings in internationally renowned conferences and journals such as CVPR, ICRA, IROS, RSS, NeurIPS and CoRL.

Job Description

As a Research Scientist- Robotics AI, you contribute to research projects at the forefront of the Embodied and Cyber-physical AI industry. Key responsibilities include:

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct research and engineering in core AI and machine learning fields to enable industrial embodied AI—including computer vision, autonomous navigation, and adaptive manipulation—specifically for manufacturing, shop-floor automation, logistics, and material handling domains.
• Push the boundaries in industrial robotics by incorporating advancements in large vision-language-action models to enhance real-time factory reasoning, multi-robot coordination, and operational safety.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with global manufacturing engineering, plant operations, and product development teams to ensure seamless technology transfer from simulation to physical shop-floor hardware and systems integration.
• Implement research results to solve complex, real-world industrial challenges, ensuring high-reliability system integration within Bosch’s smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 platforms (such as APAS and active production environments).
• Stay at the forefront of industrial innovation by actively engaging with manufacturing technology consortia, automation communities, and specialized conferences focused on industrial robotics and factory automation.
• Document and disseminate research findings through high-caliber publications, industry white papers, and/or foundational patent submissions tailored to industrial automation and robotics.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Robotics or a related discipline or Master's degree with >= 2/4years industry experience after graduation.
• A minimum of 5years of R&D experience, or an equivalent graduate research background, primarily in AI technologies including Computer Vision and Robotic or Automotive Motion and Behavioral Planning.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages commonly used in machine learning (e.g., Python, C++, Rust).
• Strong interpersonal, communication, and teamwork capabilities.
• Knowledge of major machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Hands-on experience in reinforcement learning for behavior or motion planning or other applicable contexts and familiarity with common RL techniques (e.g. PPO, DQN, DDPG).
• A strong portfolio of publications in premier machine learning, deep learning, robotics and computer vision journals and conferences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with real-world product development and deployment of autonomous systems.
• Hands-on experience building and applying multimodal transformer-based sequence-to-sequence models, especially multimodal vision-language-action models.
• Hands-on experience in computer vision and deep learning, with work in any of the following areas: multimodal transformers, multimodal language models, diffusion models, NeRF, gaussian splatting, object detection / segmentation, 3D scene understanding, sensor calibration, SfM, voxel/BEV grid-based feature representation.

Additional Information

We offer a competitive base salary for this position with a range in US-California of --$185,000 - $215,000 along with an annual corporate bonus, and a long-term incentive bonus designed to reward sustained impact and contribution over time. Within the salary range, the individual pay is determined based on several factors, including, but not limited to, work experience and job knowledge, complexity of the role, job location, etc.

Your well-being matters at Bosch! We offer a a benefits package designed to empower you in every area of your life. This includes premium health coverage, a 401(k) with generous matching, resources for financial planning and goal setting, ample paid time off, parental leave, and comprehensive life and disability protection.

*Bosch adheres to Federal, State, and Local laws regarding drug-testing. Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a drug screen and background check. Candidates who have been offered the position must pass both screenings before their start date.