VP of Embodied AI & Autonomy: Product-Driven Robotics

Apptronik; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Apptronik is seeking a vice president to lead the embodied AI organization behind Apollo. This role owns AI strategy and a large technical organization spanning real-time controls, whole-body reinforcement learning, dexterous manipulation, VLA post-training, and agentic autonomy.

This leadership position focuses on turning advanced AI stacks into a coherent system that delivers useful work for customers, bridging research with practical product deployment.

Qualifications

• Senior leadership experience across embodied AI, robotics, controls, or autonomy.
• Credibility in robot learning, manipulation, reinforcement learning, VLA models, or related research areas.
• Practical judgment for shipping physical products, not only publishing research.
• Ability to connect technical strategy with product roadmap and customer readiness.
• Experience leading large technical teams through ambiguous autonomy problems.

Responsibilities

• Define embodied AI vision and roadmap for Apollo.
• Lead strategy across learned and classical autonomy components.
• Align model architecture decisions with product needs and deployment goals.
• Guide data collection strategy for improving humanoid robot behavior.
• Lead a multi-disciplinary AI, controls, and robotics organization.

Skills

Senior leadership

Embodied AI

Robotics

Reinforcement learning

Autonomy strategy

Job description

Apptronik is seeking a vice president to lead the embodied AI organization behind Apollo. This role owns AI strategy and a large technical organization spanning real-time controls, whole-body reinforcement learning, dexterous manipulation, VLA post-training, and agentic autonomy.

This leadership position focuses on turning advanced AI stacks into a coherent system that delivers useful work for customers, bridging research with practical product deployment.