Tech Lead Research Scientist, Physical AI Infra

Bytedance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 254,000 - 480,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Job summary

ByteDance seeks a Tech Lead Research Scientist to own the technical strategy for Physical AI Infra in San Jose. You will translate research and product requirements into architecture and execution plans, and lead cross-team delivery across multiple engineers and partner teams.

You will mentor engineers, raise the engineering bar, and help shape interfaces spanning data pipelines, simulation, model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in a technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of software engineering, ML systems, robotics, or related experience.
• 3+ years of experience as a tech lead.
• Deep expertise in robotic learning, AI training/inference infrastructure, or robotics data and sim-to-real workflows.
• Experience taking complex systems from prototype to production deployment.
• Strong communication, motivation, and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and multi-quarter roadmap for major Physical AI infra areas.
• Translate research, product and customer requirements into architecture and execution plans.
• Lead architecture and delivery across engineers and partner teams, define interfaces.
• Mentor engineers, develop technical leaders, and raise engineering standards.
• Define interfaces across the AI lifecycle including data pipelines, simulation, training, evaluation, inference, and deployment.

Skills

Software engineering

ML systems

Robotics

Tech lead experience

Cross-functional collaboration

Publications

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/Robotics/EE/AI

Tools

Isaac Lab

Isaac Sim

MuJoCo

Cosmos

vLLM-Omni

RLInf

Job description

Tech Lead Research Scientist, Physical AI Infra

Location:

San Jose

Team:

Technology

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A259421A

Responsibilities

• Track advances in academia, industry, and open-source communities; contribute technical insights, software, and, where appropriate, publications.
• Own the technical strategy and multi-quarter roadmap for major Physical AI infrastructure areas, translating ambiguous research, product, and customer requirements into clear architecture and execution plans.
• Lead architecture and delivery across multiple engineers and partner teams, define system boundaries and interfaces, resolve cross-stack trade-offs, and remain accountable for end-to-end technical outcomes.
• Define interfaces across the Physical AI lifecycle—including data pipelines, simulation, model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment—while directly owning one or more major platform components.
• Mentor engineers, develop technical leaders, and raise the engineering bar across the team.

Qualifications

• Minimum Qualification(s)- Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of software engineering, machine learning systems, robotics, or related industry experience.
• 3+ years of experience as a tech lead.
• Deep expertise in at least one of the following areas, with working knowledge across one or more of the others: robotic learning, including imitation learning, reinforcement learning, vision-language-action models, world models, or policy evaluation; AI training and inference infrastructure, including distributed training, inference engines, GPU kernels, or collective communication; robotics data and simulation systems, including multimodal dataset verification, synthetic data generation, simulation, data curation, or sim-to-real workflows.
• Experience taking technically complex systems from prototype through validation and production deployment.
• Strong communication skills, self-motivation, sound engineering judgment, and the ability to work effectively across research and engineering teams.
• Preferred Qualification(s)- Contributions to relevant open-source projects such as Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Cosmos, vLLM-Omni, SGLang Omni, RLInf, etc.
• Experience building large-scale AI or robotics platforms used by multiple teams or external customers, or experience with real-world robot systems and operational challenges.
• Publications at leading machine learning, systems, or robotics conferences.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $254400 - $480000 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

3. Exercising sound judgment.

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request