Senior Manager, AI Perception and Skills

About the role

The Senior Manager of AI Perception & Skills will lead the development of AI-driven perception and skills capabilities for Agility Robotics' humanoid robots. This role involves leading two complementary teams: AI Perception, focusing on real-time object detection and scene understanding, and AI Skills, focusing on learning from demonstration. The role requires a focus on applied research and engineering that delivers production impact within a one-year horizon.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of AI Perception and Skills capabilities, from research conception through production deployment on robot hardware.
• Own the roadmap and success of both teams, setting clear goals and holding yourself and the team accountable for quality, reliability, and pace.
• Accelerate our data flywheel strategy by combining teleoperation, synthetic data, and fleet learning to systematically expand robot performance and reliability at scale.
• Champion your team's talent, represent their needs to senior leadership, and foster an inclusive environment where engineers feel safe to experiment and learn from failure.
• Drive performance cycles, build individualized development plans, and lead hiring to grow both teams with high-caliber researchers and engineers.

Requirements

• Advanced degree (M.S. or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in AI/ML, with 3+ years managing engineering or research teams.
• Demonstrated experience shipping real-time AI systems in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other mission-critical domains.
• Deep technical expertise in computer vision and learning-from-demonstration (e.g., imitation learning, behavior cloning).
• Experience deploying models on resource-constrained edge hardware, with practical knowledge of inference optimization, power, and thermal constraints.
• Proven ability to build and scale high-performing teams, including hiring, mentorship, and organizational development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with teleoperation systems for robot data collection or remote operation.
• Experience with humanoid or legged robot platforms in research or production settings.
• Experience fine-tuning or adapting foundation models (vision-language, diffusion policy, etc.) for robotics applications.

Benefits

This role offers a competitive total rewards package including:

• 401(k) Plan with a 6% company match.
• Equity: Company stock options.
• Insurance Coverage: 100% company-paid medical, dental, vision, and short/long-term disability insurance for employees.
• Benefit Start Date: Eligible for benefits on your first day of employment.
• Well-Being Support: Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Time Off: Exempt Employees: Flexible, unlimited PTO and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown. Non-Exempt Employees: 10 vacation days, paid sick leave, and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown, annually.
• On-Site Perks: Catered lunches four times a week and a variety of healthy snacks and refreshments at our Salem and Pittsburgh locations.
• Parental Leave: Generous paid parental leave programs.
• Relocation Assistance: Provided for eligible roles.
• Annual Discretionary Bonus: Provided for eligible roles.

All of our roles are U.S.-based. Applicants must have current authorization to work in the United States. Agility Robotics is committed to a work environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. Each individual has the right to work in a professional atmosphere that promotes equal employment opportunities and prohibits unlawful discriminatory practices, including harassment. Therefore, it is the policy of Agility Robotics to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Agility Robotics prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.