Vice President of Embodied AI

About the Role

Apptronik is seeking a Vice President of Embodied AI to lead the development of the "brain" and "nervous system" of our humanoid robots, particularly our flagship robot, Apollo. This role will own the company's AI strategy and lead a multi-disciplinary organization of 45+ engineers and researchers, focusing on real-time controls, whole-body reinforcement learning, dexterous manipulation, and agentic autonomy.

Responsibilities

• AI Strategy & Technical Vision: Define and own the company's embodied AI vision and roadmap, aligned with product strategy and long-term autonomy goals. Drive technical decision-making around model architectures and establish architectural principles for a safe, reliable robotic system.
• Controls Stack Unification: Architect and execute a unified controls strategy, bridging high-level semantic reasoning, mid-level policy execution, and low-level deterministic real-time control. Ensure the unified stack meets latency, stability, and safety requirements.
• Model Development & Autonomy: Lead development of models and policies for state estimation, locomotion, manipulation, VLA post-training, and agentic task planning. Establish best practices for fine-tuning, safety constraints, and continuous learning.
• Data Collection & Learning Strategy: Own the end-to-end data strategy, including data collection programs, dataset requirements, and simulation environments for training and evaluation.
• Customer-Centric Deployment: Ensure controllers are reliable, safe, and deliver ROI for customers. Define model readiness criteria and use field telemetry to improve models.
• Thought Leadership & Recruiting: Act as an ambassador for the company, publicize key findings, and attract top-tier talent.
• Team & Organizational Leadership: Manage and scale a multi-disciplinary organization, set engineering and research standards, and foster a culture of technical excellence and collaboration.

Qualifications

• Required:
  • 10+ years in robotics, AI, or machine learning, with 5+ years in senior leadership managing large technical organizations (40+ engineers/researchers).
  • Deep technical fluency across the modern robotics stack, including classical control theory, reinforcement learning, and foundation models.
  • Experience deploying AI-driven hardware or robotics systems to external customers.
  • Experience defining and scaling data strategies for large-scale action models.
  • Respected presence in the AI/robotics research community with a strong publication record.
  • Exceptional communication skills, able to distill complex technical constraints into clear strategic decisions.
• Strongly Preferred:
  • Direct experience with humanoid or legged robotics, dexterous manipulation, or dynamic whole-body control.
  • Experience integrating third-party foundation and VLA models.
  • Experience navigating safety and compliance challenges in human-centric environments.
  • Advanced degree in Robotics, Computer Science, ML, or a related field.

What Success Looks Like

• Unified controls and AI stacks operating seamlessly from semantic reasoning to real-time actuation.
• Robots performing reliable, revenue-generating work for customers, with AI capabilities translating into commercial milestones.
• Data collection strategy accelerating model improvement across teleoperation, fleet, and simulation sources.
• Pragmatic adoption of internal, partner, and third-party models based on performance, safety, and deployment speed.
• Organization recognized as a leader in applied embodied AI, attracting world-class talent.
• Executive and product decisions grounded in a clear understanding of AI stack capabilities and timelines.

This is a direct hire position. Apptronik provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without discrimination or harassment.