Robotics Research Engineer

Binabik AI is a deep-tech robotics startup with roots at ZHAW, building the first agentic operating system for humanoid and industrial robots: a modular "brain" that lets robots learn quickly from limited data and perform long-horizon tasks in dynamic, unstructured environments.

Our stack is ROS 2 native and orchestrates specialized models, reusable skills, and persistent memory through a multi-agent architecture. This is what lets our robots adapt to new tasks with far less data than end-to-end approaches.

We are based at Technopark Winterthur and backed by a strong network of grants, strategic hardware partners across the leading humanoid manufacturers.

As a Robotics Research Engineer, you develop the core software of Binabik AI: the agentic physical AI operating system that powers humanoid robots. You will work across manipulation, ROS-based systems, and learning components, and help turn research results into a reliable product that runs on real hardware.

• Develop and maintain the core software behind Binabik's agentic operating system.

• Work on robotic manipulation and the integration of our software with humanoid platforms.

• Contribute to data collection, teleoperation, vision-language-action models, and agentic AI components.

• Move research results into robust, deployable software in close collaboration with the team.

• Test and validate your work on physical robots.

• An MSc in robotics, computer science, AI, or a related field (a PhD is a plus).

• Strong programming skills in Python; comfortable in a (distributed) Linux environment.

• Hands-on experience with ROS or ROS 2, including building and debugging real robotic systems.

• Demonstrated ability to debug across the full stack — from a misbehaving sensor or actuator up to a misbehaving policy or planner.

• Experience with robotic manipulation.

• Fluent English, which is our working language.

• The right to work in Switzerland.

• Experience with humanoid or mobile-manipulation platforms (Agibot, Unitree, Galaxea, or similar) which is a strong plus.

• Experience with teleoperation systems, imitation learning, or data-collection pipelines for robot learning.

• Familiarity with manipulation stacks, motion planning, or modern perception models (VLAs, VLMs in a robotics context).

• A strong publication record at leading venues. In robotics, this includes RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, and IEEE-RAS Humanoids. In AI and machine learning, this includes NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and CVPR.

• German.

• A core engineering role at an early-stage company building the brain of humanoid robots.

• Real ownership of central parts of our software and direct technical impact.

• Direct work with state-of-the-art humanoid robots.

• Close collaboration with a founding team that combines robotics and AI research.