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Senior Research Engineer, Humanoid Manipulation

FieldAI· Engineering – Research
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Boston, MA$150k - $300kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Research Engineer to advance humanoid manipulation and robotics foundation models, bridging research and deployed robotics systems in FieldAI’s Boston-based team.

Responsibilities

  • Advance Humanoid Manipulation Research and Development: Design, implement, and evaluate learning-based manipulation models and strategies for humanoid robots across a wide range of tasks; Drive projects from early concepts through on-robot testing and deployment; Develop loco-manipulation capabilities that integrate perception, control, and planning.
  • Drive Robotics Foundation Model Development: Contribute to foundation models for manipulation, working on model architecture, data collection, large-scale training pipelines, and deployment infrastructure; Ensure model development supports generalization and transfer across diverse robotic platforms; Collaborate with research scientists to integrate large-scale manipulation data into learning pipelines powering foundation models; Train and evaluate manipulation models using imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and other training approaches.
  • Build Systems That Bridge Research and Deployment: Translate research ideas into reliable robotic systems that operate in real-world conditions; Ensure systems are robust, reproducible, and aligned with data collection and learning objectives; Develop experimental infrastructure to support rapid iteration, large-scale training, and evaluation.
  • Collaborate Across Disciplines: Partner with mechanical and electrical engineers on hardware integration and system bring-up; Work closely with field teams to refine interfaces and improve manipulation performance; Act as a connective layer between autonomy research and applied robotics engineering.
  • Rapidly Iterate and Deliver: Prototype quickly, run experiments on hardware, and validate results in the field; Balance exploratory research with concrete deliverables that support near-term goals; Debug complex system-level issues spanning software, hardware, data, training infrastructure, and learning.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
  • 2+ years of hands-on experience in robotic manipulation and/or robot learning in academic or industry settings.
  • Strong foundation in robot kinematics, dynamics, and control, with a focus on manipulation.
  • Strong background in learning-based manipulation, with an emphasis on reinforcement learning and imitation learning, and experience training modern deep-learning models.
  • Experience using frameworks such as PyTorch and building reproducible model-training and evaluation pipelines.
  • Proven experience implementing and evaluating robotic systems on real hardware.
  • Ability to work effectively in fast-paced, highly collaborative environments.
  • Curiosity, ownership, and the confidence to challenge assumptions and propose new approaches.

Skills

Required:PyTorch
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About FieldAI

Robot intelligence built for the real-world.

FieldAI is the leader in deploying general-purpose robots in unstructured environments, providing a universal brain that works across many robots, and many tasks.

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