Senior Staff Research Engineer, Robot Intelligence

Lab Summary: The Robot Intelligence Lab at Samsung Research America is a new facility dedicated to advancing the field of robotics through cutting-edge research and development. The lab’s mission is to develop advanced technologies such as robotics foundation models, vision-language-action (VLA) models, vision language models (VLMs), reinforcement learning, imitation learning, advanced sensing, and sensor fusion to create intelligent robotic systems capable of interacting with their environment in a human-like natural manner. To achieve this mission, the lab collaborates closely with both with external entities such as universities, startups, and government labs, and with several Samsung Product and Advanced Research labs.   

Position Summary:  Samsung Research America is looking for someone who has solid technical skills and rich academic and/or industry experience in areas of robotics and embodied intelligence. Our ideal candidate is to explore novel AI technologies towards generalizing robots to perform tasks in the real world. Samsung’s unique advantage in the consumer electronics market and growing focus on AI and robotics will provide you with exciting technical challenges and a rewarding career experience. By leveraging Samsung’s vast product ecosystem to deliver novel user experiences, your work will define Samsung’s future in robotics and significantly impact real-world users.

Position Responsibilities:

• Develop and design robotic hardware and software components
• Integrate sensors, actuators and other component into robotic systems
• Design, develop, integrate and test algorithms for robot control, navigation and perception, and analyze and optimize robotic system performance and accuracy
• Work within cross-functional, cross-divisional teams and assist in the design, analysis and performance evaluation from concept to completion
• Document and present results for optimizing models for real-time inference on edge devices and robotic systems
• Conduct experiments and benchmark performance against state-of-the-art approaches in robotic task planning
• Solid background on model inference acceleration, quantization for embedded or edge devices
• Prepare proof-of-concepts, demo/prototypes, design, and execute pilot studies using available robot platforms
• Deploy robot platforms and newly built data collection mechanisms for in-the wild data aggregation in semi-structured and unstructured environments targeting high impact business areas

Required Skills:

• PhD or Master’s degree in EECS/Robotics or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience
• 7+ years’ industry experience in robotics foundation models, vision-language-action (VLA) models, and vision language models (VLMs)
• Demonstrated experience in kinematics, dynamics, and control systems for robotic systems
• Solid understanding of computer vision techniques (e.g., object detection, segmentation, tracking) and real-time video tokenizer design and multi-view image processing
• Knowledgeable of tools and processes to monitor model performance and data quality, including model tuning experience
• Strong experience with sensors and actuators integration, CAD, and 3D printing tools
• Familiarity with PyTorch, TensorFlow, C, C++, Java, ROS, and CUDA
• Strong understanding of robotics fundamentals, including locomotion, manipulation, sensor inputs, pose tracking, 3D mapping, SLAM, ROS, and policy architectures particularly for semi-structured and unstructured environments
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Excellent verbal communication and writing skills to effectively represent the derived results and technical concepts developed in the course of the work