# Research Engineer / Scientist

**Company:** [World Labs](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/world-labs)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** AI Research
**Salary:** $250k – $350k/yr
**Experience:** 6+ years
**Skills:** Robotics, Imitation Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Robot Learning, Sim-To-Real Transfer, Domain Randomization, System Identification, Python, C++, PyTorch, Diffusion Models, Neural Networks, Robot Policies, Simulation, Low-Level Controllers
**Posted:** 2026-07-28

> Research Engineer/Scientist developing state-of-the-art robot-learning policies for manipulation, with emphasis on sim-to-real transfer, scalable training and inference, and robust real-world deployment. Requires 6+ years of relevant experience, strong robotics and deep-learning expertise, and Python or C++.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and implement modern robot-learning systems, including imitation learning and reinforcement learning for manipulation.
- Research, prototype, and productionize robotic policies focused on speed, precision, and scalability.
- Develop training pipelines for sim-to-real transfer, including domain randomization, system identification, and real-sim alignment.
- Collaborate with simulation and infrastructure teams to reduce the sim-to-real gap and integrate learning methods with real-robot deployment stacks.
- Build end-to-end training and evaluation workflows, from large-scale data generation through training and evaluation.
- Optimize training speed, inference latency, and data-generation efficiency for production-scale constraints.
- Diagnose simulation and real-world rollout failures and develop solutions that improve robustness, efficiency, and generalization.
- Contribute research ideas, mentor teammates, and establish best practices for robot learning.

## Requirements
- 6+ years of experience in manipulation, locomotion, robot policy training, or related areas.
- Strong foundation in robotics, neural network design, and sim-to-real transfer.
- Deep experience with robot policy designs, such as VLA, WAM, or diffusion-based policies.
- Proficiency in Python and/or C++.
- Hands-on experience building research or production robotic systems.
- Experience with deep-learning frameworks such as PyTorch and low-level robotic controllers.
- Ability to drive projects from concept through deployment in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Strong ownership, engineering rigor, and focus on correctness, stability, and measurable improvements.
- Collaborative approach and commitment to high-quality experimentation, design, and code.

## Similar jobs

- [Research Scientist - Humanoid Robotics](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/596c02cb-a8fe-4499-8514-605f283fbc73) - Applied Intuition - Sunnyvale, CA - $250k – $423k/yr
- [Senior Research Engineer, Safety](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/895361c1-4855-4f5a-8be7-da7e4af996f6) - Decagon - San Francisco, CA - $200k – $400k/yr
- [Applied AI, Research Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/50836d6b-5367-4c06-a6bf-5ef143d5366c) - Anthropic - San Francisco, CA - $300k – $400k/yr
- [Senior Software Engineer, AI](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/7e214d55-30ad-4109-b1dd-90ef20e63df1) - Maybern - New York, NY - $180k – $230k/yr
- [Senior Product Builder, Organizational Intelligence](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/055a44bc-2ab2-4d24-bc52-ab326cc477fb) - Vanta - Remote - $176k – $207k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/1c4f2394-4ad0-40e1-b3a9-d6550733fce2
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/1c4f2394-4ad0-40e1-b3a9-d6550733fce2