Software Engineer, Data Quality

Physical Intelligence

San Francisco, CA

On-siteCareer-pivot friendly

Who this role is best for

Geared toward mid-level engineers with vendor management experience and technical proficiency in building customer-facing software, comfortable with end-to-end QA processes for multimodal data. Collaboration with global vendors and researchers in the robotics/AI domain is central to the role.

Best fit for

Mid-level engineers with 5+ years in customer-facing software and vendor management experience
— “Vendor management experience: working directly with third-party data providers, delivering actionable feedback, and measurably improving the quality of their output.”
Candidates with robotics or multimodal sensor data expertise for added relevance
— “Experience with robotics, egocentric video, or other multimodal sensor data.”
Process-driven professionals who prioritize instrumentation and iteration over brute-force execution
— “Strong ops acumen and drive — a bias to instrument, measure, and iterate quickly rather than crank hours at a broken process.”

Things to consider

Requires cross-team communication across researchers, operations, and external vendors
— “Clear written and verbal communication across researchers, operations teams, and external partners.”
Hands-on data review and rubric refinement are non-negotiable responsibilities
— “Comfort being hands-on in the data: reviewing samples yourself, writing and refining rubrics, and spot-checking your own program's output.”

How to stand out

Highlight experience building QA tooling and automated data validation systems
— “Build the software interfaces, tooling, and infrastructure scale the system in an automated way...”
Demonstrate history of defining measurable quality rubrics for research teams
— “Define quality standards: Partner with researchers to translate what 'good data' means into concrete, measurable rubrics...”
Showcase vendor coaching success in prior roles to align with loop management needs
— “coach them on standing up QA checks on their own side”

Pace · SteadyCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Mid Level

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

Built and ran the end-to-end QA process for multimodal data ingested from third-party vendors
Defined quality standards for data
Built software interfaces and tooling for data QA

Typical background

Data engineering experienceVendor managementData quality assurance

Skills & requirements

Required

Data Quality AssuranceData AuditMultimodal Data QAVendor ManagementData Quality StandardsData Sampling StrategyData Review Workflows

Preferred

RoboticsEgocentric VideoMultimodal Sensor DataQa/validation Tooling

Stack & domain

Customer Facing SoftwareVendor ManagementOps AcumenCommunication

About the role

Original posting from Physical Intelligence via Ashby

Physical Intelligence is bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world. We are a group of engineers, scientists, roboticists, and company builders developing learning algorithms to create a model that will control any robot to do any task.
The Team
Training robot foundation models takes enormous amounts of multimodal data. The Data Operations team makes sure that data is high quality, well understood, and safe to train on. This role owns quality assurance and audit for data, working closely with the researchers who consume it and the teams who create it.
In This Role You Will
Own external data QA & audit: Build and run the end-to-end QA process for multimodal data ingested from third-party vendors and partners — sampling strategy, review workflows, pass/fail decisions, and audit trails — so data is verified before it reaches training.
Define quality standards: Partner with researchers to translate what "good data" means into concrete, measurable rubrics and acceptance criteria; keep them versioned and current as research needs evolve.
Build the system: Build the software interfaces, tooling, and infrastructure scale the system in an automated way - correctly sampling the right data for QA, internal QA checks, tracking dips in data quality from vendors and exposing those insights back to the vendors.
Manage vendor quality loops: Deliver structured, actionable feedback to vendors; coach them on standing up QA checks on their own side; iterate until vendor-side and internal QA agree; enforce standards through review and acceptance processes.
What you'll bring
~5 years of experience across building customer facing software.
Vendor management experience: working directly with third-party data providers, delivering actionable feedback, and measurably improving the quality of their output.
Strong ops acumen and drive — a bias to instrument, measure, and iterate quickly rather than crank hours at a broken process.
Comfort being hands-on in the data: reviewing samples yourself, writing and refining rubrics, and spot-checking your own program's output.
Clear written and verbal communication across researchers, operations teams, and external partners.
Nice to have
Experience with robotics, egocentric video, or other multimodal sensor data.
Experience defining requirements for QA/validation tooling or working with engineers on automated data quality checks.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Source: Physical Intelligence careers (Ashby)