Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Blackhornvc; Redwood City (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading robotics company in Redwood City is seeking a Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineer to tackle challenges in robot task planning. The role includes designing ML solutions and optimizing performance while collaborating with multiple teams. Candidates should have a degree in Computer Science or a related field, along with 5+ years of experience in applying machine learning to production systems. Strong Python and PyTorch skills are essential, as well as experience with cloud infrastructure like AWS. The position offers competitive salary and potential equity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience applying machine learning to production systems.
• Experience with cloud-based infrastructure such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Ability to work on various ML tasks including classification, regression, and segmentation.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement machine learning solutions across robotics stack.
• Build performant training and inference pipelines using PyTorch.
• Collaborate with teams to integrate ML into real-time robotic systems.

Skills

Strong Python skills

Experience with PyTorch

Machine learning solutions implementation

Model training and evaluation

Cloud-based infrastructure

Debugging and optimization

Familiarity with CI/CD

Education

Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Mathematics

Tools

AWS

Docker

Linux

Git

Job description

About the Role

As a Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineer, you will be working on a myriad of challenges related to robot task and action planning. You will leverage techniques from machine learning to solve hard sequential decision problems that require reasoning about the physical world and its dynamics. You will also stay abreast of the latest progress in imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and other related fields in order to further develop Dexterity’s technology foundations in Physical AI. Additionally, you will be responsible for updating and scaling our current ML pipelines to cover more scenarios and improve accuracy. Dexterity's robotic solutions integrate data from a multitude of sensors, including RGB cameras, depth sensors, force‑torque sensors, encoders, system telemetry and human input. To better inform the planning algorithms, you may work on sensor fusion and state estimation techniques to leverage this multimodal sensory data. You will also work closely with the data platform, physics simulation, and robot operations teams to develop effective and efficient ways to improve the system’s internal world model. Dexterity has an expanding set of algorithmic challenges as we deploy new robotic applications, including areas such as:

• Improving packing algorithms to build taller, denser, more stable structures with a wider variety of objects.
• Solving the logistics task of moving and sorting inventory throughout a warehouse.
• Building models that understand physics and geometry for both short- and long-horizon tasks.

In addition to curating datasets and developing/improving machine learning models, you will be responsible for building data flywheels. Ideally, you will bring data-driven productization experience and help the team broadly in qualifying, deploying, and updating models.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement machine learning solutions across Dexterity’s robotics stack, including but not limited to perception, decision-making, action scoring, and predictive modeling.
• Own the full ML development cycle for these solutions: data curation, labeling, training, evaluation, deployment, and iteration.
• Build performant training and inference pipelines using PyTorch, with production-readiness and scalability in mind.
• Collaborate closely with robotics, data platform, and simulation teams to integrate ML into real-time, latency-sensitive robotic systems.
• Use profiling, monitoring, and experiments to optimize model performance and reliability.
• Ensure reproducibility, traceability, and modularity across training and serving pipelines.
• Maintain clean, production-quality code in Python (and C++ where required).
• Help establish best practices for model versioning, dataset management, and ML operations.

Required Skills

• Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Mathematics; 5+ years of industry experience applying machine learning to real-world, production systems; Strong Python skills and deep experience with PyTorch.
• Ability to work fluently across ML tasks, e.g., classification, regression, ranking, segmentation, and structured prediction.
• Strong engineering background with experience profiling, debugging, and optimizing model and pipeline performance.
• Proven ability to design and maintain reliable systems, from model training to field deployment.
• Experience with cloud-based infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerized environments (Docker).
• Familiarity with Linux, Git, CI/CD and software development best practices (unit/acceptance/integration testing, code reviews).

Nice to haves

• Prior experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or real-time ML applications.
• Exposure to multimodal data (RGBD, force‑torque, pose estimates, telemetry).
• Experience deploying models using serving stacks like NVIDIA Triton, TorchServe, or custom low-latency frameworks.
• Background in computer vision, geometric learning, or time-series modeling.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Ray or other distributed training and inference systems.
• Previous startup experience or experience in fast-paced, cross-disciplinary environments.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Compensation

Salary: US$ 170,000 – 225,000 per year, based on skills, experience, education, and market factors. Base pay is one component of a broader compensation package that may include equity grants, benefits, and other incentives. Eligible employees may be considered for equity awards as part of their overall compensation. Access to benefits and wellness resources is provided in accordance with company policies and may vary based on role and location.