Robotics Autonomy Engineer — Whole-Body Manipulation

FieldAI; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

FieldAI in Irvine designs embodied AI for autonomous robots and values hands‑on hardware work. As Robotics Autonomy Engineer – Manipulation, you will lead whole‑body control and manipulation capabilities for humanoids and arm‑equipped quadrupeds, translating field scenarios into reliable robot behaviors.

You will train manipulation policies from demonstrations, adapt vision‑language models to robots, and collaborate with perception and locomotion teams to deliver end‑to‑end capabilities on real

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or higher in Robotics, CS, or related field.
• Deep expertise in robot manipulation or whole‑body control.
• 2+ years deploying manipulation on real robots.
• Hands‑on with robot arms/hands/grippers on humanoids or quadrupeds.
• Solid knowledge of kinematics, dynamics, contact modeling, force control.
• Experience with manipulation planning and control (trajectory optimization, MPC).
• Experience with learning‑based manipulation (imitation, RL, VLC).
• Proficiency with Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, Drake, and ROS/ROS2.
• Experience enabling perception for manipulation.
• Strong Python/C++ in Linux env.
• Familiar with ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
• Passion for moving devices in the real world.

Responsibilities

• Develop whole‑body control and manipulation for humanoids and quadrupeds.
• Move field scenarios from concept to hardware execution.
• Integrate learning and model‑based manipulation with perception and locomotion.
• Train manipulation policies from demonstrations and adapt VLC models for hardware.
• Design grasping, contact, and force strategies for varied objects.
• Make behaviors robust across lighting, object variation, and real sites.
• Build simulation environments and evaluation pipelines for manipulation.
• Deploy on physical robots and iterate via lab and field tests.
• Collaborate with locomotion, perception, and systems engineers on end‑to‑end capabilities.

Skills

Robot manipulation

Whole‑body control

Python development

C++ development

Linux environment

Machine learning

PyTorch

JAX

TensorFlow

Education

Master’s degree or higher in Robotics/CS

Tools

Isaac Lab

MuJoCo

Drake

ROS/ROS2

ONNX Runtime

TensorRT

Job description

FieldAI in Irvine designs embodied AI for autonomous robots and values hands‑on hardware work. As Robotics Autonomy Engineer – Manipulation, you will lead whole‑body control and manipulation capabilities for humanoids and arm‑equipped quadrupeds, translating field scenarios into reliable robot behaviors.

You will train manipulation policies from demonstrations, adapt vision‑language models to robots, and collaborate with perception and locomotion teams to deliver end‑to‑end capabilities on real