Lead Robotics Machine Learning Engineer

Persona AI is developing and commercializing rugged, multi-purpose humanoid robots that perform real work. Persona’s founding team has a decades-long history in humanoid robotics, bionics, and product development delivering robust hardware that has touched the stars, worked miles below the surface of the ocean, roamed Disney Parks, and has even been featured on a US postage stamp. Our mission is focused squarely on shipping beautiful, reliable products at massive scale, while building a customer-focused team to achieve these aims.

Lead Robotics Machine Learning Engineer

We're looking for an experienced Machine Learning Engineer to drive our machine learning strategy. We are primarily interested in candidates who have developed and released products to market, but can be flexible depending on aptitude and energy. 

As one of the inaugural Machine Learning Engineers at Persona, you will have an incredible opportunity to get in at the beginning to shape the design and development of Persona’s humanoid robot. 

What will you do?

• Lead the design and development of the Persona ML software stack and support its application in manipulation, navigation, locomotion, and perception.

• Craft a comprehensive plan for the development of machine learning models, keeping up to date with the state of the art in research and development.

• Work with the team to develop, test, and deploy software, machine learning pipelines, and data collection pipelines.

• Monitor and evaluate the performance of models in the real world.

• Manage partnerships with ML collaborators at Universities and other companies.

• Lead the further growth of  the machine learning team.

What should you have?

• Courage and grit to lead the machine learning team to solve some of the hardest problems in embodied AI.

• Can inspire and motivate a team to jump off the proverbial cliff with you and build the airplane on the way down.

• 6+ years of experience in machine learning applied to robotics.

• Experience with deep learning frameworks (Pytorch, JAX, TensorFlow, etc.)

• Experience with cloud computing to develop models, store data, etc. (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Forward-thinking about the future of robot learning and excited about the prospect of large massively-trained models, specifically for robust manipulation.

• Strong understanding of the state of the art research in robot learning (behavior cloning for manipulation, reinforcement learning for locomotion, world models, etc.).

• Understanding of the challenges of deploying neural network models in the real world.

• Experienced in deploying both traditional and learning based approaches for robotics.

• Capable of writing high quality software.

• Thrive in fast paced and ambiguous environments.

• Strong first principles thinker.

What really stands out?

• PhD or equivalent experience  in computer science, robotics, machine learning, or another related field.

• Published papers at top ML/Robotics conferences (ICML, ICRA, CoRL, RSS, NeurIPS).

• Have deployed robots, collected large amounts of data, and trained large neural networks that work in production environments.

Why join Persona AI?

• You'll shape technology that's redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.

• Work alongside passionate teammates who value diversity, creativity, and continuous learning.

• Enjoy full access to advanced prototyping tools, labs, and the freedom to experiment and innovate.

• We offer competitive compensation, excellent benefits, flexible work environment, and equity opportunities.

Not sure if you meet all the listed qualifications? That’s okay!
We encourage you to apply anyway. Our needs are constantly evolving, and we're always looking for talented individuals who can grow with us. You might be exactly who we’re looking for — even if it’s for a role we haven’t thought of yet.

Persona AI embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We believe the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.