Robotics Engineer

Description

About AIRoA

The AI Robot Association (AIRoA) is launching a groundbreaking initiative: collecting one million hours of humanoid robot operation data with hundreds of robots, and leveraging it to train the world’s most powerful Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models.

What makes AIRoA unique is not only the unprecedented scale of real-world data and humanoid platforms, but also our commitment to making everything open and accessible. We are building a shared “robot data ecosystem” where datasets, trained models, and benchmarks are available to everyone. Researchers around the world will be able to evaluate their models on standardized humanoid robots through our open evaluation platform.

Job Description

In this role, you will:

• Design and build scalable data collection systems operating across hundreds of humanoid and mobile robots
• Develop low-latency, semi-autonomous, and bilateral teleoperation systems that maximize controllability while minimizing operator workload
• Build automated pipelines for large-scale model deployment and rigorous evaluation in both simulation and real-world robotic platforms
• Collaborate closely with the Vision-Language-Action (VLA) team to integrate and deploy state-of-the-art models onto physical robots
• Engineer robust robotic software and hardware systems for reliable real-world operation
• Diagnose, debug, and optimize performance across perception, control, and system integration layers
• Translate research prototypes into scalable, production-grade engineering systems in collaboration with cross-functional teams

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• M.S. or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, with 3+ years of relevant industry experience (or equivalent hands-on experience)
• Extensive hands-on experience with complex, high-DOF robotic systems, including bimanual mobile manipulators and humanoid robots operating in real-world environments.
• Strong experience controlling real robotic systems using ROS/ROS2, including full-stack system integration and deployment
• Solid understanding of teleoperation systems, AR/VR interfaces, and leader–follower control architectures
• Strong programming skills in C++ and Python, with the ability to write production-grade code and perform system-level integration
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively both independently and within multidisciplinary engineering teams
• Experience developing, validating, and deploying reliable robotic systems in production or field environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Publications in top-tier robotics conferences or journals (e.g., TRO, IJRR, RSS, CoRL, ICRA)
• Experience taking complex robotic systems from prototype to production
• Practical experience with tactile sensing and contact-rich manipulation
• Experience contributing to large-scale robot data collection or fleet management systems
• Familiarity with robotic simulators such as Isaac Sim or MuJoCo for training and evaluation
• Experience integrating Sim2Real transfer methods or Vision–Language–Action (VLA) models onto real robotic systems
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and system validation methodologies for robotics applications
• Experience building full-stack web applications (frontend and backend) for robotics data infrastructure, evaluation platforms, or fleet management systems

Benefits

Few initiatives globally match the scale of this project in collecting large-scale robotic data and developing foundation models for embodied AI. As part of one of Japan’s leading national programs, the project is supported by a 20.5 billion yen investment from NEDO.

This role will be central to the project’s success. You will have significant ownership and technical autonomy, with the opportunity to shape core systems that define the future of large-scale robotics and embodied AI.

Engineers are strongly encouraged to grow their careers through this initiative—for example, by leading system deployments, contributing to open-source robotics software, and driving engineering excellence across large-scale robotic platforms.