Senior/Staff Research Engineer – Robot Learning

About the Role at RobCo

At RobCo, we develop AI-powered robotic systems that make industrial processes more autonomous, efficient, and scalable. Our Autonomous Manufacturing Platform combines modular industrial hardware with physical AI, enabling rapid deployment and continuous optimization in real production environments.

With locations in Munich, San Francisco, and Austin, and backed by leading investors such as Lightspeed, Lingotto Innovation, and Sequoia, we are working to redefine industrial automation.

At RobCo, we automate the ordinary, so humans can do the extraordinary. To achieve this, we are looking for an ambitious Senior/Staff Research Engineer – Robot Learning (m/f/d) to help us establish RobCo as leading provider of automation solutions.

As a Senior Research Engineer - Robot Learning, you will drive the development, adaptation, and real-world deployment of cutting-edge learning-based techniques for robotic manipulation. You will work at the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and systems engineering - scouting state-of-the-art research and translating it into robust, scalable capabilities that run on real robots every day.

You will shape the core of RobCo’s robot learning stack: model selection, policy training, evaluation frameworks, and sim-to-real workflows. As a senior member of the team, you will mentor junior engineers and guide key technical decisions while keeping the stack pragmatic, efficient, and aligned with product needs.

Your Responsibilities

• Research, benchmark, and evaluate state-of-the-art robot learning methods (e.g., VLA models, transformers, diffusion policies, RL, visuomotor models)

• Adapt academic models for real-world deployment with a focus on robustness, latency, and safety

• Develop proprietary robot learning models tailored to RobCo’s data, hardware, and modular platform

• Build scalable training, data, and evaluation workflows together with infrastructure and software teams

• Integrate learned policies into robotic systems including perception, control, and runtime pipelines

• Define clear performance metrics and build automated evaluation loops (simulation and hardware)

• Own benchmarking pipelines and ensure models meet deployment readiness standards

• Mentor junior engineers/researchers and lead technical reviews of learning-based components

• Collaborate closely with perception, manipulation, simulation, and software teams on system-level design

• Stay current with the state of the field and guide strategic robot learning directions at RobCo

We're looking for someone who has:

• Advanced degree (Master’s; PhD preferred) in Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field

• 5-10+ years of experience in robot learning research or ML for robotics (industry or academic)

• Strong grounding in imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and simulation-to-real transfer. Publication record at conferences like CoRL, Humanoids, RSS, IROS, NeurIPS, ICLR a strong plus

• Hands-on experience deploying learned policies on real robotic systems

• Excellent Python skills; experience with PyTorch, JAX, HuggingFace, or similar frameworks

• Ability to design experiments, evaluate models rigorously, and communicate results clearly

• Proven track record mentoring engineers or researchers and driving research-quality code

• Bonus: experience with VLA/foundation models, robotic datasets, ROS 2, or scalable training systems (Ray, AWS, Slurm)

Why join RobCo?

• Develop modular, software-defined robotics solutions with us that set new standards in automation.

• Help us build robots equipped with state-of-the-art AI that perceive their environment, analyze data, and make intelligent decisions in real time.

• As part of a very dynamic and fast-growing scale-up, you will take on responsibility from day one, drive your own projects, and see the direct impact of your work.

• Flat hierarchies, open communication, and regular 360° feedback enable fast decisions and support your professional and personal development.

• Work out across Germany in over 7,200 studios with our subsidized Wellpass membership.

• Flexible working hours, a modern office, and—depending on the role—the option to work from home.

• Regular team events—from relaxed beer & pizza nights on the rooftop terrace to shared experiences on ski trips or at Oktoberfest.

About RobCo

RobCo was founded in late 2020 in Munich and develops AI-powered robotic systems that bring learning and autonomy to industrial processes. The Autonomous Manufacturing Platform combines modular industrial hardware with a software architecture for physical AI, enabling rapid implementation, continuous optimization, and application-specific performance.

Through a Robotics-as-a-Service model, RobCo helps industrial companies automate manual tasks while reducing operational complexity and risk. The company covers a wide range of industrial applications, including machine tending, palletizing, dispensing, and welding.

RobCo operates in Europe and the USA, with locations in Munich, San Francisco, and Austin. The company is backed by leading global investors, including Lightspeed, Lingotto Innovation, and Sequoia.

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

At RobCo, applicants are selected regardless of ethnic origin, religion, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation. All decisions throughout the recruitment process are based solely on applicants’ qualifications, skills, knowledge, and experience, as well as relevant business requirements.