Robotics Data Pipeline Intern

Persona AI Inc; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 22,000 - 33,000; Full time

Job summary

Persona AI Inc in Houston seeks a Robotics Data Pipeline Intern to help build and optimize multimodal data pipelines for training foundational models. You will collaborate with data and robotics engineers, handling sensor streams, video pipelines, and kinematic data while contributing real code that ships.

Ideal candidates are pursuing CS/ML/robotics degrees, with Python and PyTorch experience, plus coursework in CV, time-series, or sensor processing. Houston internship with hands-on impact.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in CS, data engineering, ML, robotics, or related field.
• Solid Python skills and exposure to PyTorch for data loading or multimodal datasets.
• Coursework or project experience with computer vision, time-series data, or sensor processing.
• Familiarity with video processing tools or pose estimation frameworks is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Rebuilding and extending pipelines that ingest egocentric video with sensor streams.
• Owning post-processing algorithms for force analysis and state inference.
• Bridging kinematic retargeting work translating human hand tracking to end‑effector coordinates.
• Optimizing data augmentation strategies and coordinating cross‑team efforts.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

Multimodal data

Robotics

Time-series data

Sensor processing

Curiosity

Education

B.S. in Computer Science

M.S. in Data Engineering

Ph.D. in Robotics

Tools

OpenCV

FFmpeg

MediaPipe

Isaac

Cosmos

Ray

Spark

Omniverse

MuJoCo

Job description

Robotics Data Pipeline Intern – Multimodal Data

About Us

At Persona, we’re building the next generation of humanoid robots, and that requires an unprecedented volume of high-quality, multimodal data. We’re moving beyond basic teleoperation to leverage massive datasets of in-the-wild egocentric video combined with dense sensor streams (IMU, haptics, kinematics, and high-fidelity force profiles). We’re looking for a curious, technically sharp intern to roll up their sleeves and help us turn raw, unstructured multimodal data into high-fidelity training assets for our robots.

The Role

As a Data Pipeline Intern, you’ll work directly alongside our data and robotics engineering teams to support the infrastructure that feeds our foundation models. You’ll get hands‑on experience with real multimodal data challenges, from sensor stream processing and video pipeline optimization to force analysis and kinematic retargeting. This is not a “fetch coffee and shadow engineers” internship. You’ll own real work and ship real code.

What You’ll Work On

• Rebuilding and extending pipelines that ingest and synchronously process egocentric video alongside rich sensor streams (IMU, force‑torque, tactile, proprioception)
• Owning post‑processing algorithms for force analysis and hidden state inference, including contact force estimation, occlusion handling, and inverse kinematics gap‑filling
• Bridging kinematic retargeting work that translates human hand tracking into humanoid end‑effector coordinates
• Optimizing and testing data augmentation strategies (spatial, temporal, synthetic viewpoints, sensor noise injection)
• Tying together work across our Hardware Teleoperation Team to help align human‑robot play‑data across modalities

What We’re Looking For

• Currently pursuing a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
• Solid Python skills and exposure to PyTorch, particularly around data loading or multimodal datasets
• Coursework or project experience with computer vision, time‑series data, or sensor processing
• Familiarity with video processing tools (OpenCV, FFmpeg) or pose estimation frameworks (MediaPipe) is a plus
• Awareness of imitation learning, VLA architectures, or human‑to‑robot transfer concepts is a plus, but genuine curiosity counts for a lot here

Bonus Points

• Experience with NVIDIA’s robotics stack (Isaac, Cosmos, GR00T)
• Exposure to distributed computing (Ray, Spark) or simulation environments (Omniverse, MuJoCo)
• Any project work involving synthetic data generation or tactile/spatial data representations