Senior Roboticist, Embodied AI & General Robots

Socket.dev; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Socket.dev in Sunnyvale invites a Principal Roboticist to join the MEGA team within Wayve Labs as a founding member. You will help define the research agenda, technical strategy, and foundations of a new robotics program, collaborating with researchers in foundation models, embodied intelligence, and large-scale ML.

You will own hardware and software across the robot stack, building, deploying, and testing policies on real machines, while shaping data collection and evaluation for robust,

Qualifications

• Experience in robot manipulation and working with hardware.
• Proven track record in robotics research or engineering.
• Publications in top robotics/AI venues are valued.
• PhD preferred; Master’s with equivalent experience welcome.
• 5+ years of relevant industry experience.

Responsibilities

• Build, integrate, and maintain robot hardware platforms for research.
• Develop and maintain robot software in C++ and Python (ROS/ROS2).
• Create infrastructure for policy deployment, data collection, evaluation, and the robotics data flywheel.
• Run real-world robot experiments and define data collection pilots.
• Collaborate with research teams on robot policy development and data strategy.
• Debug and troubleshoot robotic software, hardware, and policy failures.
• Build deployment, regression, and validation tests for robot systems.
• Shape technical direction across robotics, ML, hardware, and experimentation.

Skills

Robot manipulation

Leadership in robotics

Strong programming (C++/Python)

Research & publications

Communication across teams

Education

PhD preferred

Master's degree with equivalent experience

Tools

ROS/ROS2

C++

Python

Job description

Socket.dev in Sunnyvale invites a Principal Roboticist to join the MEGA team within Wayve Labs as a founding member. You will help define the research agenda, technical strategy, and foundations of a new robotics program, collaborating with researchers in foundation models, embodied intelligence, and large-scale ML.

You will own hardware and software across the robot stack, building, deploying, and testing policies on real machines, while shaping data collection and evaluation for robust,