VLA Robotics Research Intern: Deploy AI on Humanoid Systems

Boston Dynamics; Waltham (MA); On-site; USD 41,000 - 96,000; Full time

Job summary

Boston Dynamics is seeking PhD-level interns to join the Atlas VLA Research Team and advance vision-language-action models on real-world robot hardware. You will lead experiments, collect data, and prototype new training recipes that bridge simulation and Atlas deployment.

You will collaborate with engineers and scientists to integrate learned policies with robot control, extend data pipelines, and contribute production-grade code in Python and C++.

Qualifications

• Actively pursuing a PhD (preferred) or a research-heavy Master’s in CS/Robotics.
• Experience training and deploying imitation learning models for robotics with strong experimental hygiene.
• Familiarity with deploying ML on real hardware and robotics platforms.

Responsibilities

• Lead high-stakes research projects establishing hypotheses and experiments for VLA/WAM performance.
• Prototype and deploy data collection/mixing/grading schemes and training recipes on Atlas hardware.
• Collaborate across teams to integrate learned policies with low-level robot control.
• Extend data pipelines to ingest diverse data sources for robustness.
• Write production-grade Python/C++ code integrating with existing systems.

Skills

Python

C++

Imitation learning

Research

Education

PhD in CS/Robotics

Tools

Kubernetes

SLURM

Open X-Embodiment

Job description

Boston Dynamics is seeking PhD-level interns to join the Atlas VLA Research Team and advance vision-language-action models on real-world robot hardware. You will lead experiments, collect data, and prototype new training recipes that bridge simulation and Atlas deployment.

You will collaborate with engineers and scientists to integrate learned policies with robot control, extend data pipelines, and contribute production-grade code in Python and C++.