Senior Applied Scientist, Robotic Manipulation & Autonomy

Amazon; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); Hybrid; USD 202,000 - 274,000; Full time

Job summary

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in real-world environments. You will shape the technical direction from problem formulation to production deployment, while evolving into a leadership role over time.

You will mentor researchers and engineers, collaborate across teams, and define evaluation benchmarks and sim-to-real workflows.

Qualifications

• PhD or MS with 6+ years of applied research experience.
• Experience with Java, C++, or other programming languages.
• Strong publication record at major Robotics/ML/AI conferences (e.g., RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).
• Experience with simulation environments for robot learning (Isaac Gym/Lab, MuJoCo, or similar).
• Experience with sim-to-real transfer for robotic systems.
• Demonstrated track record of leading technical projects.
• Experience mentoring junior scientists/engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead research and development of manipulation and autonomy systems for robots, including planning, control, learning, and closed-loop execution.
• Design and implement algorithms focused on autonomy and interaction with dynamic environments.
• Collaborate with perception, motor control, hardware, and systems teams to build integrated autonomy pipelines.
• Define evaluation methodologies, benchmarks, and sim-to-real workflows for manipulation and autonomy.
• Stay engaged with the research community, incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into deployed systems.
• Mentor researchers and engineers, help set technical direction, and contribute to team growth.
• Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment.
• Bridge research initiatives with practical engineering implementation.

Skills

Java

C++

PyTorch

JAX

Publications

Education

PhD

Master's degree

Tools

MuJoCo

Isaac Gym

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in real-world environments. You will shape the technical direction from problem formulation to production deployment, while evolving into a leadership role over time.

You will mentor researchers and engineers, collaborate across teams, and define evaluation benchmarks and sim-to-real workflows.