Senior Research Scientist / Engineer: Open Call

Holiday Robotics Inc.; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental & Vision coverage

401(k) plan

Relocation stipend

Free daily meals

Job summary

Holiday Robotics Research Inc. is seeking a Senior Research Scientist/Engineer to identify fundamental bottlenecks in humanoid robotics and create credible paths from insight to deployment on FRIDAY, the mobile humanoid platform.

You will work across sensing, actuation, dynamics, control, planning, robot learning, simulation, and system architecture with emphasis on real-world impact. The role emphasizes deep technical judgment, execution against evidence, and the ability to push ambitious ideas

Qualifications

• Evidence: first-author or equivalent high‑impact publication in a technical field relevant to humanoid robotics.
• Development of a prototype, system, or technology that advanced the state of the art.
• Founding or co‑founding a technical venture and bringing a deep‑technology product into the world.
• Track record of carrying complex technical ideas from concept through implementation and validation on physical systems.
• Other evidence of exceptional technical achievement outside conventional paths.

Job description

Senior Research Scientist / Engineer: Open Call

Before You Apply

If one of the positions below closely matches your background, please apply to that role directly.

The Open Call is intended for candidates who can make a distinctive contribution outside—or across—the boundaries of these positions. Applicants seeking an internship should apply through the Intern posting listed above.

About the Role

Holiday Robotics Research Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of Holiday Robotics, a leading humanoid robotics company based in South Korea. We build the entire robotics stack in-house—from hardware and firmware to planning, control, simulation, and end-user software, with the goal of freeing people from tedious, dangerous, and repetitive tasks.

We are looking for a Senior Research Scientist / Engineer with deep expertise, strong technical judgment, and the ambition to see your work running on every robot we deploy around the world. Your work may span sensing, actuation, dynamics, control, planning, robot learning, simulation, system architecture, or an area we have not yet identified. Your charter is to identify a fundamental technical bottleneck limiting humanoid performance and build a credible path from insight to evidence, prototype, and deployment on FRIDAY.

Our Research Direction

Holiday Robotics is building safe, dexterous humanoids for real industrial work. Our long-term vision is to make capable robots easy to deploy wherever repetitive, physically demanding, or dangerous work still depends on human hands—giving people more time, choice, and opportunity to focus on work that matters more. FRIDAY, our mobile humanoid, is the platform for that vision: a dual-arm system with a 7-DoF arm and a 20-DoF hand on each limb, tactile sensing in the hands, and head-mounted vision.

Our research loop runs from simulation to hardware and back. We build calibrated digital twins of FRIDAY and its environments in Holiday-Newton, our in-house simulator; train and validate controllers and policies at scale; deploy them on the physical robot; and feed real-world demonstrations and failures back into fine-tuning, system identification, and the twin itself. Reducing the Sim-to-Real gap is a shared objective across every team.

We develop the complete stack in-house—hardware, actuation, sensing, firmware, dynamics, planning and control, simulation, robot learning, and deployment software. We believe progress in humanoid robotics should be demonstrated not through one‑off demos, but through reliable, repeatable performance under real‑world constraints. The Open Call exists for work that strengthens this loop, or replaces part of it with something better.

Key Areas

• Sensing
• Actuation
• Dynamics
• Control
• Planning
• Robot learning
• Simulation
• System architecture

This is a senior role. We expect exceptional depth in at least one technical field, a bias toward execution and evidence, and the ability to originate and validate ambitious ideas with minimal predefined structure. Evidence may come from academia, industry, a startup, or independent projects. Applicants should demonstrate at least one of the following:

• First-author or equivalent high‑impact publication in a technical field relevant to humanoid robotics.
• Development of a prototype, system, or technology that advanced the state of the art.
• Founding or co‑founding a technical venture and bringing a deep‑technology product into the world.
• A track record of carrying complex technical ideas from concept through implementation and validation on physical systems.
• Other evidence of exceptional technical achievement outside conventional academic or industry paths.
• Compensation: $200,000–$300,000 USD base salary + competitive equity. Final compensation is based on experience and technical impact.
• Medical, dental & vision: 100% employer‑paid coverage for employees and partial coverage for dependents. Medical coverage is provided through a full‑network PPO plan.
• 401(k): Employer‑sponsored retirement plan.
• Relocation: Stipend for out‑of‑state candidates.
• Meals: Free daily meals.

Holiday Robotics Research Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.