About the position
We are seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive the development of\nnext-generation manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in\ncomplex, real-world environments. This role is designed for an exceptional\ntechnical leader with a strong research background and a passion for translating\ncutting-edge ideas into working robotic systems.\n\nYou will play a central role in defining the technical direction of our\nmanipulation and autonomy stack, from problem formulation and algorithm design\nto system integration and real-world deployment. While this role is hands-on and\ndeeply technical, it is also expected to evolve toward technical leadership and\nteam building over time.\n\nAbout the team\nFauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is building capable, safe, and genuinely\ndelightful robots for everyday life. Our goal is simple: make robots people\nactually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces.\nWe believe that future won’t arrive until building for robotics becomes far more\naccessible. Today, too much effort is spent reinventing the fundamentals. We’re\nchanging that by developing tightly integrated hardware and software systems\nthat make it faster, safer, and more intuitive to create real-world robotic\nproducts.\nOur work spans the full stack: mechanical design, control systems, dynamic\nmodeling, and intelligent software. The focus is not just functionality, but\nexperience. We’re building robots that feel responsive, expressive, and\ngenuinely useful.\nAt Fauna, you’ll work at the frontier of this space, helping define how robots\nmove, manipulate, and interact with people in natural environments. It’s an\nopportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team\nfocused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build.\nIf you care about making robotics real for everyone and building systems that\nare as delightful as they are capable, we’re interested in hearing from you.
Responsibilities
- Lead research and development of manipulation and autonomy systems for robots, including planning, control, learning, and closed-loop execution
- Design and implement algorithms, especially focused around autonomy and interaction with dynamic environments
- Work closely with perception, motor control, hardware, and systems teams to build tightly integrated autonomy pipelines
- Define evaluation methodologies, benchmarks, and simulation-to-real workflows for manipulation and autonomy
- Stay deeply engaged with the research community, selectively incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into deployed systems
- Mentor and guide other researchers and engineers, help set technical direction, and contribute to team growth and research culture
- Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment
- Bridge research initiatives with practical engineering implementation
Requirements
- PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
- 5+ years of industry or academic research experience
- Experience in Java, C++, Python, or a related language
- Strong publication record at major Robotics/ML/AI conferences (e.g., RSS,\nCoRL, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR)
- Experience with simulation environments for robot learning (Isaac Gym/Lab,\nMuJoCo, or similar)
- Experience with sim-to-real transfer for robotic systems
- Demonstrated track record of leading technical projects
- Experience mentoring junior scientists/engineers.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience participating in or leading technical collaborations and creating alignment across diverse groups (e.g., hardware engineering, software engineering, program management)
- Experience working with PyTorch or JAX software, or experience programming with at least one software programming language
- History of impactful first-author publications at major conferences
- Experience with large-scale distributed training for RL
- Experience bridging research with practical engineering implementation in robotics systems
- Experience bridging academic research and production robotics
Benefits
- health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
- 401(k) matching
- paid time off
- parental leave
- sign-on payments
- restricted stock units (RSUs)