Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer

Humanoid
London, United Kingdom
On-site

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for machine learning researchers with robotics experience who can design and deploy dynamic control policies.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with a PhD or advanced degree in robotics or machine learning and industry experience in policy development.
    — “BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related technical field.”
  • Individuals skilled in reinforcement learning and simulation platforms like Isaac Lab or MuJoCo.
    — “Experience with physics-based simulation environments such as Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or similar platforms.”
  • Professionals who can bridge simulation and real-world deployment, particularly with humanoid robots.
    — “Develop methods for robustness, adaptation, and sim-to-real transfer, including domain randomization and learning from real-world robot data.”

Things to consider

  • The role demands in-office presence in London, given the daily catered meals and collaboration expectations.
    — “Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in-office.”
  • Candidates must be prepared to work on real-time control systems with strict performance requirements.
    — “Optimize policy inference and training systems for the performance and latency requirements of real-time control.”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with sim-to-real transfer and real-world deployment of learned policies.
    — “Deploy, evaluate, debug, and fine-tune learned policies on physical humanoid robots.”
  • Demonstrate domain expertise in reinforcement learning and generative models for motion capabilities.
    — “Hands-on experience with RL and at least one additional area such as imitation learning, generative models, sequence models, or large-scale representation learning.”
  • Showcase ability to integrate learning systems into broader robotics control stacks.
    — “Integrate learned policies into the broader robot control and autonomy stack.”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

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

What success looks like

  • Develop robust, reusable motion capabilities for dynamic locomotion and whole-body control on humanoid robots.
Typical background
PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related technical field.

Skills & requirements

Required

Deep LearningReinforcement LearningImitation LearningGenerative ModelsSequence ModelsLarge-scale Representation LearningRoboticsControlsSimulationData GenerationTraining PipelinesPolicy InferenceTraining SystemsReal-time ControlPhysics-based Simulation Environments

Preferred

Legged RobotsHumanoidsWhole-body ControlLocomotionMotion ImitationLoco-manipulationMotion CaptureTrajectory OptimizationModel-based ControlLearning From DemonstrationsTraining Policies At ScalePublications At Neurips, Icml, Iclr, Corl, RSS, CVPR

Stack & domain

PythonPyTorchReinforcement LearningImitation LearningGenerative ModelsSequence ModelsLarge-scale Representation LearningPhysics-based Simulation EnvironmentsIsaac LabMujocoLeadershipCommunicationTeamworkProblem-solvingAdaptabilityRoboticsMachine LearningComputer ScienceHumanoid RoboticsCybersecurity

About the role

Original posting from Humanoid via Ashby

Here at Humanoid, we believe in a future where robots amplify human potential. That’s why we’ve set out on a mission to build the world’s most capable, commercially-scalable, and safe humanoid robots. We’re bringing that mission to life with HMND‑01 - our rapidly developed humanoid platform being deployed in real industrial environments - and we’re growing the team to take it even further.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for a strong Machine Learning Research Engineer to join our Autonomy team and develop the learning-based algorithms that power dynamic locomotion and whole-body control on our humanoid robots.

You will develop robust, reusable motion capabilities that enable the robot to move dynamically, maintain balance, interact with its environment, and combine locomotion with manipulation. This includes building the underlying learning-based motion primitives that can be composed into increasingly complex whole-body behaviors.

You will work closely with robotics, controls, simulation, and machine learning engineers to turn learned behaviors into reliable capabilities running as part of the robot's real-time control stack.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

  • Design and train learning-based locomotion and whole-body control policies for dynamic robotic behaviors.
  • Develop motion primitives using different learning based generative models.
  • Apply reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and other learning-based approaches to motion generation and control.
  • Build scalable simulation, data generation, and training pipelines using platforms such as Isaac Lab and MuJoCo.
  • Develop methods for robustness, adaptation, and sim-to-real transfer, including domain randomization and learning from real-world robot data.
  • Deploy, evaluate, debug, and fine-tune learned policies on physical humanoid robots.
  • Optimize policy inference and training systems for the performance and latency requirements of real-time control.
  • Integrate learned policies into the broader robot control and autonomy stack.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

  • BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
  • 3+ years of experience developing machine learning systems in industry or research.
  • Strong understanding of deep learning and modern policy architectures, including training, inference, experimentation, and debugging.
  • Hands-on experience with RL and at least one additional area such as imitation learning, generative models, sequence models, or large-scale representation learning.
  • Strong Python and PyTorch experience.
  • Experience with physics-based simulation environments such as Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or similar platforms.
  • Ability to reason about learning algorithms in the context of dynamics, control, and physical systems.

Nice to have:

  • Experience applying reinforcement learning or imitation learning to legged robots, humanoids, or other complex physical systems.
  • Experience with whole-body control, locomotion, motion imitation, or loco-manipulation.
  • Experience deploying learned policies on real robotic systems and debugging the sim-to-real gap.
  • Familiarity with motion capture, trajectory optimization, model-based control, or learning from demonstrations.
  • Experience training policies at scale across large numbers of simulated environments.
  • Publications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, CVPR, or equivalent contributions to impactful open-source robotics or machine learning projects.

WHAT WE OFFER

  • Competitive equity: stock options with meaningful upside as we scale.
  • 30+ paid days off, including 23 days of annual leave, all UK bank holidays, and additional company closure days (including Christmas–New Year shutdown).
  • Private healthcare, including virtual and in-person care.
  • Pension scheme with 8% total contribution (5% employee, 3% employer) on full earnings.
  • Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in-office.
  • Work at the frontier - collaborate daily with world-class engineers, researchers, and product experts building the next generation of AI and humanoid robotics.
  • Real ownership - direct access to founding leadership, meaningful input on product direction, and the ability to drive key initiatives from day one.

Source: Humanoid careers (Ashby)

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