Sr. AI & Automation Engineer, Robotics

Description

The company's advanced concepts group explores new technologies, builds prototypes of next-generation solutions, and creates software for robotic-assisted surgery.

The research team is developing advanced augmented dexterity capabilities for next-generation robotic platforms.

Responsibilities

• The aim is to let researchers spend their time on ideas rather than on the manual work of testing those ideas on real robots.
• Build AI tools, automation, integrations, and evaluation capabilities that help researchers and engineers train, test, and assess models faster and make better decisions. Use existing AI technologies and create new ones, including agent-driven workflows, AI tooling, and the APIs, services, and automation frameworks behind engineering and research work.
• Examples include agents that set up and run experiments, automated workflows that speed up testing and evaluation, and tools that review logs and video so teams can see why something failed and how to improve it.
• This is hands-on engineering that applies AI to how physical AI systems are trained and tested. You automate that work rather than designing the models, and you work daily with ML researchers, simulation engineers, and robotics engineers.
• Build and integrate AI tools, APIs, and agent workflows that automate engineering and research across the team.
• Automate training and fine-tuning from experiment setup through launching, tracking, and comparing runs, so results can be reproduced without custom scripts.
• Build automation and integration workflows that let researchers test new ideas in simulation and on real robots quickly, reliably, and at scale.
• Design evaluations and experiments that show, with statistical confidence, whether a change is a genuine improvement.
• Build logging, analysis, and debugging tools that explain results and failures, and turn robot sessions into training data.
• Make your work reliable, secure, and safe to run, with human approval where it matters and responsible AI use throughout.
• Assess new AI tools, models, and technologies, and adopt the ones that show measurable value.
• Measure the impact of your work, document it clearly, and turn successful tools into standard team practice.

Requirements

• The company values deep expertise in a few of these areas more than shallow coverage of all of them.
• Hands-on experience with real robots: you have built testing, automation, or evaluation systems that ran on physical hardware through software interfaces, not only in the cloud or in simulation.
• AI or automation you built and use daily: LLM-agent workflows, AI tool integrations, copilots, or pipelines for real engineering work, with measured results. Be ready to explain one, including what it did, where it failed, and what you changed.
• Experimental rigor: you can design experiments and apply the statistics needed to tell whether an improvement is real.
• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• Production-quality Python, the ability to read C++, and comfort with Linux, CI/CD, Docker, containerized services, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Strong candidates often come from robotics, autonomous systems, physical AI, or robot-learning research and have applied AI tooling to real hardware. You work across disciplines in a fast-moving research environment and can explain trade-offs clearly to researchers and engineers.
• You don't need to meet every item above to apply.
• A BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• An advanced degree (MS or PhD) is preferred.
• Bonus: experience with robotics simulation such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab or MuJoCo.
• Bonus: experience evaluating AI/ML, robotics, or robot-learning systems.
• Bonus: surgical or medical robotics experience, including da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) systems.
• Bonus: ROS 2 or other robot middleware.
• Bonus: agent frameworks, tool integrations, or MCP servers adopted by engineering teams.
• Bonus: AI assistants, copilots, or productivity tools built for engineers or researchers.
• Bonus: AI applied to scientific, engineering, or research workflows.
• Bonus items are not required. They are signals rather than gates, and each one is a nice plus.

Conditions

The company and its customers may require current proof of vaccination against certain diseases, including COVID-19, depending on the role.

This role may be subject to U.S. export controls. Offers are contingent on an approved export license and/or a Technology Control Plan before the start date, and application details may be used to determine whether either is needed. Licensing can take 3 to 6+ months, and a Technology Control Plan typically adds about 2 weeks.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records are considered in line with fair chance laws.

Preference goes to qualified candidates who do not live, and do not plan to live, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

The role may be filled at a different job level based on business need and the candidate's experience, knowledge, and skills. Pay depends mainly on that level and the candidate's qualifications, consistent with applicable law.