Sr. Applied Scientist, Fauna Robotics

We are seeking an Applied Scientist to focus on Robotics Localization, Mapping, and Geometric Reconstruction. In this role, you'll research and build advanced SLAM and World Reconstruction algorithms that enable robots to know their pose in the world and fulfill various tasks in complex and dynamic home environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement robust robot state estimation, pose estimation, mapping, and reconstruction algorithms.
• Build simulation-based and on-robot evaluation frameworks with comprehensive benchmarks and metrics for systematic evaluation of our spatial intelligence stack.
• Lead scientific and technical projects across the spatial intelligence team.
• Collaborate with navigation, manipulation, and other teams to ensure seamless integration of localization, tracking, and mapping capabilities.
• Mentor junior scientists and engineers to solve real-world robotics problems.

About The Team

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is building capable, safe, and genuinely delightful robots for everyday life. Our goal is simple: make robots people actually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces. We believe that future won’t arrive until building for robotics becomes far more accessible. Today, too much effort is spent reinventing the fundamentals. We’re changing that by developing tightly integrated hardware and software systems that make it faster, safer, and more intuitive to create real-world robotic products.

Our work spans the full stack: mechanical design, control systems, dynamic modeling, and intelligent software. The focus is not just functionality, but experience. We’re building robots that feel responsive, expressive, and genuinely useful. At Fauna, you’ll work at the frontier of this space, helping define how robots move, manipulate, and interact with people in natural environments. It’s an opportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team focused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build.

Requirements

• PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
• Experience leading technical initiatives and key deliverables
• 6+ years of building Localization and Mapping algorithms experience
• Strong publication record at major Robotics/ML/AI conferences (e.g., RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR)
• Experience programming in Python, C++, or related language

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with modern solutions in the field of Localization, Mapping, and reconstruction such as Gaussian Splatting, Foundation Models (e.g. VGGT), etc.
• History of impactful first-author publications at major journals or conferences
• Experience bridging research with practical engineering implementation in robotics systems

Pay

USA, CA, Sunnyvale - $192,200.00 - $260,000.00 USD annually

Benefits

• Sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs)
• Health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans)
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Mental Health Support
• Medical Advice Line
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage
• 401(k) matching
• Paid time off
• Parental leave

Learn more about our benefits at amazon.jobs/en/benefits.