Research / Software Engineer - Humanoid Whole Body Learning

Lever, Inc.; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

FieldAI is seeking a Software/Research Engineer to help build the learning systems that power our next generation of humanoid robots. You will work across whole-body loco-manipulation, reinforcement learning, motion retargeting, and real-world robot deployment, turning new research and technical developments into reliable capabilities on physical humanoids.

This hands-on role closes the loop between research, simulation, and robots operating in the real world, requiring collaboration with

Qualifications

• Experience with RL, imitation learning, or related robotics learning methods.
• Strong robotics fundamentals: kinematics, dynamics, control, physical interaction.
• Experience simulating and testing robotic systems.
• Ability to bridge research and production engineering.
• BS/MS/PhD in Robotics, CS, ML, Engineering, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Develop and train whole-body loco-manipulation policies for humanoid robots.
• Deploy trained policies to physical humanoids and integrate them into production software stack.
• Advance motion retargeting pipeline transforming human motion into robot-executable behaviors.
• Reduce the sim-to-real gap by improving simulation fidelity and real-world calibration.
• Build automated evaluation and validation systems for rapid policy deployment from simulation to hardware.
• Improve the performance and scalability of robot-learning infrastructure for faster experimentation.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers across perception, learning, simulation, and hardware.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

Imitation learning

Generative models

Robotics fundamentals

Production-grade engineering

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Robotics, CS, ML, Engineering or related

Tools

NVIDIA Isaac Sim

Isaac Lab

Newton

Job description

FieldAI is transforming how robots interact with the real world. Our growing R&D team is based in Boston, where we develop risk-aware, reliable, field-ready AI systems that tackle the hardest problems in robotics and unlock the potential of embodied intelligence. We take a pragmatic approach that goes beyond off-the-shelf, purely data-driven methods or transformer-only architectures, combining cutting-edge research with real-world deployment. Our solutions are already deployed globally, and we continuously improve model performance through rapid iteration driven by real field use.

FieldAI is seeking a Software/Research Engineer to help build the learning systems that power our next generation of humanoid robots. You'll work across whole-body loco-manipulation, reinforcement learning, motion retargeting, and real-world robot deployment, turning new research and technical developments into reliable capabilities on physical humanoids. This is a highly hands-on role for someone excited about closing the loop between research, simulation, and robots operating in the real world.

What You Will Get To Do

• Develop and train whole-body loco-manipulation policies for humanoid robots.
• Deploy trained policies to physical humanoids and integrate them into our production software stack.
• Advance our motion retargeting pipeline, transforming human motion into physically plausible, robot-executable behaviors that interact with diverse environments and objects.
• Reduce the sim-to-real gap by improving simulation fidelity and closing the real-to-sim loop, using real-world robot data to calibrate and refine our simulators.
• Build automated evaluation and validation systems that make it faster and more reliable to move policies from simulation onto physical robots.
• Improve the performance and scalability of our robot-learning infrastructure, enabling faster experimentation and policy iteration.
• Work closely with researchers and engineers across perception, learning, simulation, and hardware to turn new ideas into deployed robot capabilities.

What You Bring

• BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience with reinforcement learning, imitation learning, generative models, or other learning-based approaches for robotics.
• Strong understanding of robotics fundamentals such as kinematics, dynamics, control, and physical interaction.
• Experience developing and evaluating robotic systems in simulation and/or on physical hardware.
• Ability to move comfortably between research experimentation and production-quality engineering.

What Will Set You Apart

• Hands-on experience with humanoid robots.
• Experience with whole-body loco-manipulation.
• Experience with GPU-accelerated simulation frameworks such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and/or Newton.
• Experience with motion retargeting.
• Experience taking learned robot behaviors from simulation to real hardware.
• Experience building scalable RL training, evaluation, and/or automated robot-testing infrastructure.

$120,000 - $220,000 a year

Why Join Field AI?

FieldAI is tackling one of robotics’ hardest problems: deploying robots in unstructured, previously unknown environments. Our Field Foundational Models™ advance perception, planning, localization, and manipulation with an emphasis on explainability and safety, so our systems can be trusted where it matters most.

You will work alongside a world-class team that values creativity, resilience, and bold thinking. We bring a decade-long track record of real-world deployments, strong performance in DARPA challenges, and experience from organizations such as DeepMind, NASA JPL, Boston Dynamics, NVIDIA, Amazon, Tesla Autopilot, Cruise, Zoox, Toyota Research Institute, and SpaceX.

Our R&D organization is growing and anchored in Boston, with close collaboration across our teams in Southern California and with colleagues around the US and globally.

Be Part of the Next Robotics Revolution

Solving problems at this scale takes a team as unique as the mission. We are looking for people who push beyond conventional approaches, enjoy tackling tough and ambiguous questions, and bring interdisciplinary perspective. Our success depends on exceptional AI researchers and engineers, as well as strong software developers, product designers, field deployment experts, and communicators who can turn breakthroughs into real capability.

We are headquartered in Irvine, Southern California, with teammates across the US and around the world. Join us to shape the future of embodied intelligence as part of a fun, close-knit team building systems that work in the real world.

Equal Opportunity

FieldAI celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates and employees are evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or any other legally protected status.