Remote VP of Robotics Research — Applied Systems & Research

ActiveHired is expanding its remote specialist bench with a Remote VP of Robotics Research — Applied Systems & Research at $1,200,000 - $6,000,000/year. Contributors work asynchronously from home across major English-speaking countries, translating real-world workflows in Robotics Software, Robotics Data, Robotics Research into high-signal training examples and multi-step evaluation criteria for enterprise AI models.

Primary Responsibilities

• Set the Physical AI research agenda. Identify the highest-leverage problems across robotics, embodied agents, learning, data, evaluation, and physical-world automation.
• Build agents that act in the physical world. Develop systems that connect foundation models and agents to robots, machines, instruments, and other physical interfaces.
• Advance general-purpose robot learning. Lead research across vision-language-action models, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, world models, and multimodal policies.
• Develop a science of physical-world data. Study which demonstrations, trajectories, sensor streams, environments, and supervision signals best improve learning and generalization.
• Build scalable data-generation systems. Develop methods for generating high-quality interaction data through human demonstration, teleoperation, autonomous rollout, simulation, and hybrid human–agent workflows.
• Advance evaluation and generalization. Build rigorous benchmarks for manipulation, spatial reasoning, planning, tool use, robustness, safety, and transfer across tasks and embodiments.
• Bridge simulation and reality. Study how simulated and real-world experience should be combined and where sim-to-real transfer breaks down.

Skills & Experience Needed

• Master’s or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, Engineering, or a related field.
• Research experience at a leading AI, robotics, or embodied intelligence organization.
• Strong publication record at venues such as CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, or CVPR, or equivalent high-impact technical work.
• Practical background using generalist robot policies, cross-embodiment learning, robot foundation models, or large-scale imitation and reinforcement learning.
• Hands-on experience with robotic platforms and frameworks such as ROS/ROS2, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, ManiSkill, or equivalent systems.
• Experience building robotics benchmarks, simulation environments, teleoperation systems, safety evaluations, or physical-world data engines.
• Experience building agents for engineering, scientific, manufacturing, or laboratory workflows.

Remuneration & Remote Setup

• Compensation Rate: $1,200,000 - $6,000,000/year (contract specialist remuneration)
• Work Arrangement: 100% Remote / Work From Home
• Eligible Remote Countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa
• Core Competencies: Robotics Software, Robotics Data, Robotics Research
• Hiring Agency: ActiveHired

Direct Application Process: Click the Apply button on this page to proceed directly to our partner application portal and submit your profile for immediate consideration.