Staff Robotics Research Engineer

About the role

Arm is building a Robotics Research Lab in Austin to explore the technologies required to enable the next generation of intelligent, general‑purpose robots. We are looking for a Staff Robotics Research Engineer with a strong research background in one or more areas of robotics and an interest in working across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Relevant areas include robot learning and embodied AI, perception and sensor fusion, planning and decision making, control and optimization, safety and formal methods, robot systems, and mechatronics. This is a hands‑on research role: you will develop new methods, implement them on real robotic platforms, and work with researchers across disciplines to build and evaluate complete robotic systems.

Responsibilities

• Conduct original research in one or more areas of robotics, such as machine learning and robot learning, perception, planning, control, optimization, safety, formal methods, robot systems, or mechatronics.
• Develop new methods for enabling intelligent robots to perceive, reason, plan, learn, and act in complex real‑world environments.
• Explore how robotic capabilities can be composed and integrated into coherent, hierarchical and adaptive systems.
• Investigate new architectures and abstractions for combining classical robotics, learning‑based methods, foundation models, and agentic AI.
• Build, integrate, and evaluate research prototypes on real robotic platforms and in simulation.
• Work across traditional research boundaries, collaborating with researchers in ML, perception, planning, control, systems, and compute architecture.
• Identify system‑level bottlenecks and translate robotics research insights into requirements and opportunities for future compute and software platforms.
• Publish research at leading robotics, AI, and systems venues and engage with the broader research community.
• Help define new research directions and contribute to the technical roadmap of Arm’s Robotics Research Lab.
• Collaborate across Arm and with external research and industry partners.

Required Skills and Experience

• PhD or equivalent research experience in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Strong research expertise in at least one area relevant to intelligent robotic systems.
• Demonstrated ability to formulate and solve open‑ended research problems.
• Experience implementing and evaluating algorithms on robotic systems, relevant physical systems, or high‑fidelity simulation.
• Strong programming skills in C++ and/or Python.
• Ability and interest to work across disciplinary boundaries and integrate research into larger robotic systems.
• Strong publication record or equivalent evidence of research impact.
• Ability to independently drive research projects and influence technical direction across a multidisciplinary team.

Nice to Have Skills and Experience

• Robot learning, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, or embodied AI.
• Vision‑language‑action models (VLAs), vision‑language models (VLMs), world models, diffusion models, or other foundation models for robotics.
• Task and motion planning, search, optimization, or decision making under uncertainty.
• Robot control, whole‑body control, MPC, trajectory optimization, adaptive or learning‑based control.
• Robotics perception, SLAM, sensor fusion, semantic mapping, spatial reasoning, or multi‑modal sensing.
• Safety‑critical robotics, runtime assurance, Control Barrier Functions, formal methods, verification, or specification‑driven behavior.
• Robotics middleware, distributed systems, real‑time systems, or end‑to‑end robot software architectures.
• Manipulation, locomotion, humanoid robotics, mobile robotics, or multi‑robot systems.
• Mechatronics, sensing, actuation, hardware/software integration, or robot bring‑up.
• Heterogeneous and embedded compute, including CPU/GPU/NPU/MCU platforms.
• Experience taking research from simulation to real robotic systems.
• Background spanning both research and production robotics.

Pay

Salary Range: $198,100 – $268,000 per year. Salary is one component of Arm’s total reward package, which will be shared with candidates during the recruitment and selection process.

Benefits

• Total reward package includes competitive compensation and additional components disclosed during the hiring process.
• Accommodations are available during the recruitment process for candidates who need adjustments.
• Hybrid working model that balances face‑to‑face collaboration with flexible remote work, tailored to team and role needs.
• Arm is an equal‑opportunity employer committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace.