Research Scientist, Robotics

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence•Seattle, WA

21h•Onsite

About The Position

As a Research Scientist on our team, you’ll have the unique opportunity to develop and investigate core research problems in foundation models and skills for robotics, contribute to the development of completely open data sets, benchmarks, and models, and experiment with robots in the real world. We are looking for applicants interested in robotics, with a focus on core techniques in robot manipulation, large scale training in simulated environments, vision-language-action models, and skill learning. International candidates are welcome to apply. Pay is competitive, and visa sponsorship is available. We collaborate frequently with researchers on other Ai2 teams focused on embodied AI, computer vision, and natural language processing, among others. Our main office has close ties and unique access to researchers at the University of Washington, only 1.5 miles away. Researchers excited about such internal and external collaborations are encouraged to apply. Research Scientists in the Robotics team will work on multiple exciting research projects in the above areas but can also contribute and engage in a variety of other activities critical to our research and mission. These include opportunities to lead select projects, mentor interns and pre-doctoral candidates, author and present scientific papers, and collaborate with researchers at other organizations including universities. Ai2’s Robotics team is led by Dieter Fox. The team aims to develop the simulation environments, data generation, and benchmarking skills that enable a rigorous and scientific investigation of the core building blocks and scaling properties of robot foundation models. The insights gained from these experiments will inform the development of truly capable foundation models for robots operating in the real world. As a Research Scientist on the Robotics team, you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of research areas including: Robotics - Enable agents that safely navigate, manipulate objects, and follow instructions in simulation and in the real world (w/ real robots). Language & Vision – Make vision-language-action models more robust and capable. Open source projects - Make substantial contributions to the tools needed for robust, reproducible, and distributed experimentation. We regularly publish in high-profile conferences and journals in robotics (CoRL, ICRA, RSS), computer vision (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV), and machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR). At Ai2, you will be working with world-class AI researchers and talented software engineers. We perform team-based, ambitious research, with a mandate to strive for big breakthroughs, not just incremental progress, in an exciting and interactive workplace. All scientists have the opportunity to mentor interns (and other students)and will participate directly in Ai2's groundbreaking work. There are no restrictions on publications.

Requirements

A strong foundation (typically PhD level) in one or more of the following areas: robot manipulation, planning and motion generation, RL and imitation learning, real world robot systems, simulation environments and sim2real, vision-language-action models.
A strong publication record in AI-related areas. Example venues include ICRA, RSS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, etc.
Strong software engineering skills. Experience working with real robot systems and/or with deep learning frameworks.

Nice To Haves

Research experience in related areas like large-scale multi-node training, training dynamics, efficiency, data curation, multimodal model debugging, post-training methods, among others.
Contributions to open-source research libraries.

Responsibilities

Lead select projects
Mentor interns and pre-doctoral candidates
Author and present scientific papers
Collaborate with researchers at other organizations including universities

Benefits

Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program.
Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan.
Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long-term incentive plan.

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