Research Engineer, Robot Intelligence

About the Lab

The Robot Intelligence Lab at Samsung Research America is a new facility dedicated to advancing the field of robotics through cutting-edge research and development. The lab’s mission is to develop advanced technologies to power intelligent robotic systems capable of manipulation, navigation, and complex reasoning for a variety of high-impact application areas. The lab collaborates closely with external entities such as universities, startups, and government labs, as well as with several Samsung Product and Advanced Research labs.

About the Role

As the Robot Intelligence Lab grows, we are hiring Researcher Engineers across multiple career levels, including Senior, Staff, and Senior Staff. The level at which a candidate is hired will reflect their experience, technical expertise, and demonstrated impact. We seek candidates with solid technical skills and rich academic and/or industry experience in robotics and embodied intelligence. Our ideal candidate explores novel technologies aimed at generalizing robots to perform tasks in the real world. This role offers exciting technical challenges and a rewarding career experience by leveraging Samsung’s vast product ecosystem to deliver novel user experiences.

We are hiring for multiple groups within the lab (Reasoning, Dexterity, Data Efficiency, and Robot Systems), and responsibilities and required skills will vary by group.

Responsibilities

• Design and evaluate the suitability of robotic hardware, sensors, and software for applications in semi-structured and unstructured environments targeting high-impact business areas.
• Integrate sensors, actuators, and other components into proof-of-concept/prototype robotic systems and analyze and optimize robotic system performance and accuracy.
• Design, develop, integrate, and test algorithms for robot perception, control, learning, navigation, and manipulation.
• Synthesize virtual models (simulations) of appearance, kinematics, and physics of real robots and environments using system identification, real-to-sim, scene generation, and sim-to-real techniques.
• Develop and deploy data collection, data processing, and model management mechanisms for in-the-wild data aggregation.
• Work within cross-functional, cross-divisional teams and assist in the design, analysis, and performance evaluation from concept to completion.
• Document and present results evaluating algorithms and models on targeted compute platforms.
• Conduct pilot studies and formal experiments to benchmark performance against state-of-the-art approaches using clear and well-reasoned metrics.
• Maintain fleets of robots and associated infrastructure for logging, monitoring, and evaluating performance across the fleet.

Requirements

• PhD or Master’s degree in EECS/Robotics or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• 2-14+ years’ experience in state-of-the-art robotics R&D, such as task-and-motion planning (TAMP), vision-language-action (VLA) models, open-world 3D perception, trajectory prediction, model predictive control, large-scale reinforcement learning, multimodal (visual, tactile, audio, semantic) information fusion, and whole-body control.
• Demonstrated experience in sensing, kinematics, dynamics, and control systems integrated on real robotic systems.
• Solid understanding of computer vision techniques (e.g., object detection, segmentation, tracking) and multi-view image processing.
• Knowledgeable of tools and processes to monitor ML model performance and data quality, including model tuning experience.
• Familiarity with PyTorch, TensorFlow, C++, ROS, and CUDA.
• Demonstrated experience in software engineering best practices to track, communicate, and document project progress.
• Strong understanding of robotics fundamentals, including locomotion, manipulation, sensor inputs, pose tracking, 3D mapping, SLAM, ROS, and policy architectures, particularly for semi-structured and unstructured environments.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent verbal communication and writing skills to effectively represent derived results and technical concepts.

Pay

Base pay range: $163,600 - $324,500 USD. Individual rates depend on factors including the role’s function and location, as well as the individual’s knowledge, skills, experience, education, and training. This is part of a comprehensive compensation package that includes annual bonus eligibility and generous benefits.

Essential Job Functions

This position will be performed in an office setting. The role requires sitting and standing at a desk, communicating in person and by telephone, and frequently operating standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.