Staff AI Research Engineer

Agility Robotics; United States; Hybrid; USD 216,000 - 338,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Equity

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Short/long-term disability insurance

Job summary

Agility Robotics is seeking a senior AI role within the AI innovation team to develop and deploy foundation models and end-to-end policies for humanoid robots. You will help shape the technical roadmap for robot learning and mentor junior AI researchers while guiding projects from conception to production.

The role emphasizes leading research, aligning across teams, and building scalable RL/IL pipelines with simulation and real-world testing in a hybrid office setup in Salem, Pittsburgh, or

Qualifications

• 7+ years of total experience in software engineering and/or AI/robotics.
• 3+ years deploying learning-from-demonstration, reinforcement learning, or related robot learning systems.
• Proven ability to mentor and develop junior engineers or researchers.
• Track record of leading complex technical initiatives from research to deployment.
• Strong ability to translate ambiguous research problems into executable work.

Responsibilities

• Establish team standards for research execution, tracking, evaluation, and benchmarking.
• Mentor junior AI researchers through project design and problem solving.
• Drive alignment across AI Research and Robotics on methods and deployment readiness.
• Review experimental design, code, and results for rigor and reproducibility.
• Design, train, and deploy robust policies for locomotion and manipulation.
• Develop scalable reinforcement learning infrastructure and evaluation frameworks.
• Collaborate with Robotics Software and AI teams to transfer policies to production.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

Mentorship

Team leadership

Research direction

Experiment design

Education

MS in Robotics, Computer Science, or related field

Tools

DiffusionPolicy

Mujoco

Isaac Sim

C++

Job description

Job Description

Job Description

Agility's commercially deployed humanoids operate alongside teams in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers—tackling physically demanding and repetitive tasks while enabling workers to focus on higher-value work. With industry-leading safety standards and years of proven deployment data, we're pioneering a new era of automation that enhances human potential.

About The Role

The AI innovation team at Agility works on building and deploying next-generation robot foundation models and end-to-end policies on humanoid robots. Your goal will be to develop and test cutting-edge methods for imitation learning and reinforcement learning on humanoid robots, in order to establish the techniques necessary for humanoid robots to perform different real-world tasks. In addition to driving research direction, you will play a key role in shaping the technical roadmap for robot learning at Agility and leveling up a growing team of junior AI research engineers by providing mentorship, guiding project execution, and establishing strong research and engineering practices.

About the Work

• Establish team-level standards for research execution, including experiment tracking, evaluation protocols, and model benchmarking.
• Mentor and guide junior AI research engineers through project design, experiment execution, and technical problem solving.
• Drive alignment across AI Research and Robotics teams on methods, evaluation, and deployment readiness for learned policies.
• Review experimental design, code, and results to ensure rigor, reproducibility, and alignment with research goals.
• Help onboard new researchers and accelerate their effectiveness in robot learning and experimental workflows.
• Design, train, and deploy robust policies for locomotion, manipulation, and dynamic interactions with the environment.
• Develop core reinforcement learning infrastructure, including scalable training pipelines and evaluation frameworks.
• Design and implement new simulation environments and tasks to support training and deployment of control policies.
• Develop, design, and test imitation learning methods.
• Collaborate with Robotics Software and AI engineering teams to develop policies which can be transferred to production.

About You

• 7+ years of total experience in software engineering and/or AI/robotics.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience developing and deploying learning-from-demonstration, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, foundation models, or related robot learning systems in real-world or simulated robotics environments
• Proven ability to mentor and develop junior engineers or researchers, raising the technical bar of a team.
• Track record of leading complex technical initiatives and influencing technical direction from research through deployment.
• Strong ability to translate ambiguous research problems into structured, executable work for a team.
• Strong programming skills in Python, with proficiency in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Experience with modern learning-from-demonstration tools such as DiffusionPolicy.
• Experience with robot data collection, training, and testing on hardware for manipulation tasks.
• MS in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field.

Bonus Points

• PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Publications in top ML or robotics conferences (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, CoRL, RSS, ICRA).
• Familiarity with robot simulation environments (e.g. Mujoco, Isaac Sim) and sim-to-real transfer techniques.
• Experience with modern reinforcement learning techniques for locomotion, manipulation, and whole-body control
• Experience with writing performant, high quality software in C++

This a hybrid position based out of one of our Salem, Pittsburgh, or Fremont offices.

The final salary offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on several factors that may include but are not limited to: market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This range may change based on geographical location and may be modified in the future.

Anticipated Salary Range

$216,000—$338,000 USD

In addition to base pay, our competitive total rewards package consists of the following for full-time employees:

• 401(k) Plan: Includes a 6% company match.
• Equity: Company stock options.
• Insurance Coverage: 100% company-paid medical, dental, vision, and short/long-term disability insurance for employees.
• Benefit Start Date: Eligible for