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Robotics Autonomy Engineer, Manipulation

FieldAI· Engineering – Autonomy
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Hybrid (Irvine, CA; Peoria, Illinois)$100k - $200kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Field AI is hiring a Robotics Autonomy Engineer – Manipulation to lead the development and deployment of whole-body control and manipulation capabilities for humanoids and arm-equipped quadrupeds, translating real field scenarios into reliable behaviors on hardware.

Responsibilities

  • Develop whole-body control and manipulation capabilities for humanoids and quadrupeds with arms, coordinating base, torso, and arm motion as a single system
  • Take specific field scenarios from concept to repeatable execution on hardware, interacting with the built environment and handling objects and tools
  • Build learning based and model based manipulation policies and integrate them tightly with perception and locomotion
  • Train manipulation policies from demonstration data and adapt vision language action (VLA) foundation models to our robots and tasks, then make them work on hardware
  • Design grasp, contact, and force interaction strategies that hold up across varied objects, surfaces, and environments, with interaction forces kept safe for people and equipment nearby
  • Harden behaviors so they succeed across repeated runs, changing lighting, object variation, and real site conditions
  • Build simulation environments and evaluation pipelines for manipulation, and use field data to close the gap between simulation and the real world
  • Deploy on physical robots and iterate rapidly through lab testing and field validation
  • Work closely with locomotion, perception, and systems engineers to deliver end to end capabilities

Qualifications

  • Master’s degree or higher in Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (PhD strongly preferred)
  • Deep expertise in robot manipulation or whole-body control
  • 2+ years of experience developing and deploying manipulation behaviors on real robotic systems (preferred)
  • Hands-on experience with robot arms, hands or grippers, and humanoid or mobile manipulation platforms
  • Solid understanding of kinematics, dynamics, contact modeling, and force control
  • Experience with manipulation planning and control, such as trajectory optimization or model predictive control (MPC)
  • Experience with learning based manipulation, such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning (RL), or vision language action models
  • Proficiency with simulation tools such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or Drake
  • Experience integrating perception for manipulation
  • Strong Python and/or C++ development skills in Linux-based development environments
  • Familiarity with machine learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
  • A passion for building things that move in the real world

Skills

Required:Robotics manipulation / whole-body controlField hardware deploymentKinematics, dynamics, contact modeling, force controlManipulation planning / MPCSimulation tools (Isaac Gym, MuJoCo, Drake)Perception integration for manipulationPython / C++ / LinuxMachine Learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
Nice to have:Learning-based manipulation / VLA models

Benefits

  • Salary: $100,000 - $200,000 a year
  • Generous salary range with base pay varying based on role scope, knowledge, experience, and Irvine market
  • On-site work in Irvine, CA
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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