Research Scientist, Robotics Research - PhD New College Grad 2026

About the role

The Seattle Robotics Lab is part of NVIDIA's mission to build the essential technology that enables any company to become a robotics company. Our team focuses on fundamental and applied robotics research, including perception, planning, control, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and simulation.

Responsibilities

• Developing algorithms, models, and methods for robotic manipulation and loco-manipulation, for both industrial and household applications;
• Integrating these methods into real-world robotic manipulation systems, including those consisting of collaborative robot arms, industrial robot arms, mobile manipulators, humanoids, and dexterous hands;
• Contributing to multi-person research projects that require a diverse set of skills across the robotics and machine learning stack;
• Engaging with the academic community through high-impact publications, conferences, workshops, and code releases;
• Collaborating with product managers and engineering teams to transfer your research into NVIDIA products that will have real-world impact;
• Mentoring interns joining NVIDIA during their PhD programs.

Requirements

• Completing a PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• A strong research track record, with work published in top robotics and AI conferences and journals such as RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, IJRR, T-RO, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, and EMNLP.
• Exceptional programming skills in Python, as well as proficiency in modern deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or JAX), robotics frameworks (ROS or ROS2), and physics simulation frameworks (Isaac Sim/Lab or MuJoCo).
• Familiarity with C++, CUDA, and Warp is a plus.
• Exceptional communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills, with significant experience working on teams.
• Comfort in working through the complexities of simulation and real-world robotics, including debugging physics simulators and renderers under rapid development; selecting, setting up, maintaining, and enhancing complex robotics hardware; debugging real-world communication systems; and designing robust workflows for model training and evaluation.

Qualifications

• The following research areas and applications are of particular interest: Bimanual and dexterous manipulation, Mobile manipulation and humanoid loco-manipulation, Multisensory perception (e.g., vision, tactile, and force/torque sensing), Simulation, sim-to-real, and real-to-sim, Vision-language-action (VLA) models, including architectural advancements, large-scale training, and test-time reasoning, Industrial applications, such as bin-picking, kitting, and assembly.

Skills

• Strong research and engineering skills;
• Team-first approach;
• Highly skilled in Python, PyTorch, JAX, ROS, ROS2, Isaac Sim/Lab, MuJoCo, C++, CUDA, and Warp;
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills;
• Experience with simulation and real-world robotics, including debugging physics simulators and renderers, setting up and enhancing complex robotics hardware, debugging real-world communication systems, and designing robust workflows for model training and evaluation.

Benefits

• Base salary range: $168,000 - $264,500;
• Eligibility for equity and benefits.

Pay

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions.

Schedule

Not specified.

Benefits

• Not specified.

Skills

• Not specified.

Benefits

• Not specified.