Research Science Manager, Safe Autonomy, SAF Lab

About the role

We are seeking a Research Science Manager to lead a team of world-class applied scientists, engineers, post-docs, and interns developing the next generation of safe autonomy on highly dynamic robotic systems. You will drive technical vision, research strategy, and ensure your team's innovations translate into production systems that operate at Amazon scale.

You will interface with top academic researchers at the forefront of safe autonomy and interdisciplinary teams across Amazon working on autonomous mobile robots, mobile manipulators, and dynamically stable robots. You will bridge academic research with real-world deployable safety layers that enable robots to safely operate around humans.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of scientists and engineers developing a universal safety layer for robotic systems, with a focus on the next generation of robots.
• Work with leadership to design and execute multi-year research roadmaps for the development of safe autonomy that spans all types of current and emerging robotic platforms.
• Lead Scientists, Engineers, post-docs, and interns to realize research and development goals and provide evidence of these results in a variety of formats.
• Drive integration of control barrier functions with planning, perception, and learning while maintaining guarantees of safe high-performance robot behavior.
• Collaborate with product teams and science leaders to set a science roadmap (with eventual impact on real robots).
• Publish research findings at top-tier conferences and contribute to the broader robotics community.
• Build relationships with academic and industry partners to stay at the forefront of safe autonomy.

About the team

Work with the inventor of control barrier functions in the Safe Autonomy Frontiers (SAF) Lab. The first industry research lab in safe autonomy, developing a universal safety layer for the next generation of robotic systems: mobile robots, manipulators, mobile manipulators, and future platforms with dynamic stability.

You will push the frontiers of performant safety for highly dynamic robots: CBF theory integrated with perception and learning, evaluated on next-generation robots. Your work will underpin robots operating alongside people at Amazon's unprecedented scale.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree.

Qualifications

• PhD in Engineering, Technology, Science, Operations Research, Robotics, Mathematics, or related fields, or Master's degree.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage.
• Maternity and Parental Leave Options.
• Paid Time Off (PTO).
• 401(k) Plan.
• Sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs).
• Health insurance (including Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line).
• Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage.
• Parental leave.

Pay

USA, CA, PASADENA - $175,100.00 - $236,900.00 USD annually.