Researcher, Locomotion

Menlo; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Menlo Research is seeking a Researcher in Locomotion to push Asimov from walking to running, recovering, and navigating real-world terrains. You will own policies that make motion robust on hardware, bridging simulation to real robots with zero-shot strategies.

You will collaborate with hardware, controls, and manipulation researchers to refine balance, gait, and recovery. Expect to contribute to open-source project work and publish learnings with the team.

Qualifications

• Experience with reinforcement learning for continuous control, legged locomotion, or whole-body control.
• Track record of getting learned policies onto real robots, not only into papers or simulators.
• Strong command of physics simulators (MuJoCo, Isaac) and domain randomization.
• Fluency in Python and RL tooling; comfortable with a ROS2-based control stack.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and ship reinforcement learning policies for bipedal and whole-body locomotion on Asimov.
• Own the sim2real pipeline end to end, building on zero-shot sim2real work so hardware runs on first tries.
• Push balance, gait, and recovery beyond demos to handle pushes and uneven terrain.
• Build and refine reward design, domain randomization, and training environments in MuJoCo.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

Continuous control

Legged locomotion

Whole-body control

Python

ROS2

Policy deployment

Sim2real

Tools

MuJoCo

Isaac

ROS2-based stack

Job description

About Menlo

Menlo Research is an Applied R&D lab building Asimov, an open-source humanoid robot platform, and the full software stack that powers it. Our mission is to make humanoid labor economically viable, turning software into physical labor at scale. We build across the full stack: hardware architecture, locomotion, autonomy, simulation, and infrastructure. We move fast, ship to real robots, and open-source everything we can. If you want your work to matter beyond a paper or a demo, this is the place.

The Role

We are looking for a Researcher, Locomotion to push Asimov from walking to running, recovering, and moving through the real world with the confidence of something alive. Asimov 0 was built to learn locomotion and Asimov 1 to learn whole-body control, and you will own the policies that make that motion robust on real hardware. You will not stop at a clip in simulation. You will get your work onto a physical biped and keep pushing until it holds up under contact, disturbance, and terrain we did not train for.

What You'll Do

• Design, train, and ship reinforcement learning policies for bipedal and whole-body locomotion on Asimov
• Own the sim2real pipeline end to end, building on our zero-shot sim2real work so a first run on hardware is never really a first run
• Push balance, gait, and recovery behavior past the demo stage into something that survives pushes, slips, and uneven ground
• Build and refine reward design, domain randomization, and training environments in MuJoCo
• Close the loop between simulation and hardware with real telemetry from real robots, then feed what breaks back into the next policy
• Work shoulder to shoulder with hardware, controls, and manipulation researchers, since whole-body control does not respect team boundaries
• Open-source what you can and write up what you learn so the community can build on it

What We Look For

• Deep hands-on experience with reinforcement learning for continuous control, legged locomotion, or whole-body control
• A track record of getting learned policies onto real robots, not only into papers or simulators
• Strong command of a physics simulator such as MuJoCo, Isaac, or similar, including reward shaping and domain randomization
• Fluency in Python and modern RL tooling, and comfort in a ROS2-based control stack
• A bias for shipping: you would rather see a policy stumble on real hardware this week than look perfect in sim next month
• Clear thinking about why a policy fails, not just whether it does
• Nice to Have Published work in locomotion, legged robotics, or sim2real transfer
• Experience with model predictive control or classical locomotion methods alongside learning-based approaches
• Contributions to open-source robotics or RL projects
• Experience bringing up new hardware and debugging the messy gap between a model and a motor

Why Join Menlo

You will own locomotion for a humanoid that thousands of developers are building on in the open. Your policies will ship to real robots, not slides, and the community will see them walk. If you want your research to leave the lab and stand up on its own two feet, this is the place.

A Note on AI

You don't need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect everyone at Menlo to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement. When that's the case, we'll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don't treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make their work easier for others to build on.

Equal Opportunity and Accommodations

Menlo Research is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic.

Menlo provides reasonable accommodations during the application process.

If you need one, please let your recruiter know.