Tech Lead Research Scientist, Physical AI Infra

Bytedance; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 242,000 - 456,000; Full time

Job summary

ByteDance seeks a Tech Lead Research Scientist to lead the Physical AI Infra initiatives in Seattle. You will own architecture, roadmaps, and end-to-end delivery for large-scale AI infrastructure spanning data pipelines, simulation, and deployment on heterogeneous hardware.

You will mentor engineers, drive cross-team collaboration, and translate ambitious research into reliable, scalable systems. Requires deep ML/robotics expertise and strong communication skills.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in CS, CE, robotics, EE, AI, or related field.
• 5 years of software engineering, ML systems, robotics, or related industry experience.
• 3+ years of experience as a tech lead.
• Deep expertise in robotic learning, AI training/inference infra, or robotics data/simulation systems.
• 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 infrastructure areas.
• Translate research, product, and customer requirements into architecture and plans.
• Lead architecture and delivery across engineers and partner teams with clear interfaces.
• Define interfaces across the Physical AI lifecycle including data, simulation, training, eval, inference, and deployment.
• Mentor engineers and raise the engineering bar across the team.

Skills

Software engineering

Leadership

Machine learning systems

Robotics

AI training & inference

Education

Bachelor's degree or above in a technical field

Tools

Isaac Lab

MuJoCo

MuJoCo/Isaac Sim

Cosmos

vLLM-Omni

Job description

Tech Lead Research Scientist, Physical AI Infra

Location: Seattle

Team: Infrastructure

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A09221

Responsibilities

The Infra-Compute division builds large-scale, highly available cloud and AI infrastructure that powers our public cloud offerings and internal products. Our US team develops technologies across AI training, inference, and agent infrastructure.We are expanding this work into Physical AI: intelligent systems that perceive, reason, and act in the physical world. The team focuses on infrastructure for Physical AI, including data and simulation platforms, distributed training and inference, and deployment on heterogeneous hardware. We collaborate closely with customers, researchers, open-source communities, and hardware partners to turn emerging research into reliable, scalable systems.

• 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 Qualifications

• 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 Qualifications

• 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 $241680 - $456000 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on 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

• 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