Director of Robotics Research

The Role:

As Director of Robotics Research, you'll lead our Robotics Research team in developing the data foundations behind robot learning. You'll define how robotics data is collected, represented, evaluated, and scaled—helping build a Robotics Data Engine that enables increasingly capable robotic systems.

Working alongside AI researchers and engineers, you'll drive research at the intersection of robotics, perception, learning, and large-scale data. You'll also build and mentor a team of exceptional Robotics Researchers, setting the technical vision while remaining deeply involved in research and experimentation.

What You'll Do

• Define and execute the research strategy for robotics data, embodied AI, and robot learning.
• Lead research initiatives focused on robotics datasets, multimodal representations, perception, manipulation, and data-centric learning.
• Build, mentor, and grow a team of Robotics Researchers while fostering a culture of scientific rigor, curiosity, and rapid experimentation.
• Develop novel approaches for collecting robotics data through teleoperation, human demonstrations, simulation, autonomous exploration, and real-world deployments.
• Design scalable robotics data pipelines by defining collection workflows, task taxonomies, annotation schemas, quality control processes, evaluation methodologies, and final data delivery formats.
• Translate research and client objectives into scalable data pipeline specifications, defining data requirements, collection strategies, labeling standards, and success metrics.
• Partner with research, engineering, product, and operations teams to operationalize pipeline designs and deliver production-ready robotics data solutions.
• Establish scalable benchmarks and evaluation frameworks to measure and improve robot learning performance.
• Stay at the forefront of robotics research by evaluating emerging literature, datasets, and techniques from leading academic labs and industry.
• Drive technical excellence through clear documentation, knowledge sharing, and effective cross-functional communication.

What We're Looking For

• Significant experience in robotics research, embodied AI, robot learning, or robotics software engineering.
• Experience leading or mentoring high-performing technical or research teams.
• Deep understanding of robotics data pipelines, multimodal datasets, and data infrastructure for robot learning.
• Strong expertise in robot perception, manipulation, control, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or foundation models for robotics.
• Experience designing and evaluating large-scale robotics datasets and data collection strategies.
• Ability to bridge research and engineering, translating cutting-edge ideas into scalable systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with experience collaborating across multidisciplinary teams.
• Passion for advancing embodied intelligence through innovative research and data-driven approaches.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Publications at leading conferences such as CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, or CVPR.
• Experience building large-scale robotics datasets, data engines, or research infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with robotics frameworks and simulation environments such as ROS, ROS2, Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Habitat, or ManiSkill.
• Contributions to open-source robotics projects or significant research impacting embodied AI.

Compensation & Benefits Notice

The national pay range for this full-time position is base salary of $250,000 –$350,000. All employees are eligible for equity compensation, and employees may also receive performance-based bonuses, dependent on role and subject to company policies. micro1 provides a comprehensive benefits package, including up to 100% reimbursement for health-insurance premiums, paid time off, a 401(K) plan with a company match, and additional benefits designed to support a high-performing, remote-first workforce.