VP of Robotics Research

We are sharing a full-time leadership opportunity for an experienced robotics research executive with deep expertise in robot learning, embodied AI, robotics software, multimodal data, perception, manipulation, and large-scale robotics data systems. The successful candidate will define the research strategy behind robotics data and robot learning, build and mentor a high-performing research team, and work across research, engineering, product, and operations to develop scalable robotics data systems and evaluation frameworks. Key Responsibilities - Robotics Research Strategy - Define and execute research strategy across robotics data, embodied AI, and robot learning - Set priorities across perception, manipulation, control, and data-centric learning - Translate emerging research into scalable technical programmes - Maintain a clear technical vision while remaining involved in experimentation - Robotics Data & Learning Systems - Define how robotics data is collected, represented, validated, and delivered - Design multimodal datasets covering perception, actions, trajectories, and environment state - Develop scalable collection strategies using teleoperation, demonstrations, simulation, autonomous exploration, and real-world deployments - Establish task taxonomies, annotation schemas, and quality-control processes - Perception, Manipulation & Control - Lead research involving robot perception and manipulation - Evaluate imitation learning, reinforcement learning, control, and foundation-model approaches - Analyse performance limitations and sources of failure - Connect research findings with scalable engineering implementations - Benchmarks & Evaluation - Establish benchmarks for robot-learning performance - Define metrics and success criteria across robotics tasks - Compare models, policies, datasets, and collection approaches - Use evaluation findings to guide research priorities - Research Team Leadership - Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing Robotics Research team - Foster scientific rigour, curiosity, and rapid experimentation - Balance long-term research priorities with practical delivery requirements - Promote strong technical documentation and knowledge sharing - Cross-Functional Execution - Partner with AI researchers, robotics engineers, product, and operations teams - Translate research and client objectives into clear data-pipeline specifications - Operationalise research into production-ready robotics data solutions - Communicate technical trade-offs and requirements clearly across teams Ideal Profile - Significant experience in robotics research, embodied AI, robot learning, or robotics software engineering - Proven experience leading or mentoring technical or research teams - Deep understanding of robotics data pipelines and multimodal datasets - Strong expertise in perception, manipulation, control, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or robotics foundation models - Experience designing and evaluating large-scale robotics datasets - Ability to translate research into scalable systems - Excellent written and verbal communication skills - Master's or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, or a related field is highly valued - Publications at CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, or comparable venues are advantageous - Experience with ROS/ROS2, Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Habitat, ManiSkill, or similar environments is valuable - Open-source robotics contributions or significant embodied-AI research are advantageous Engagement Details - Full-time engagement - Fully remote - Compensation: $1,500,000–$4,000,000/year - Work will involve robotics research leadership, embodied AI, robot learning, multimodal data, perception, manipulation, evaluation frameworks, and research-team development - Strong technical leadership combined with hands-on robotics research experience is central to the role - Project priorities, datasets, and technical approaches may evolve as research requirements develop - Work must be completed without using confidential, proprietary, unpublished, client-sensitive, or otherwise restricted information belonging to any employer, research laboratory, university, robotics company, client, collaborator, or other third party About the Platform - This opportunity is available through 24-MAG LLC. We connect experienced professionals with remote consulting opportunities across technical, evaluation, and project-based workstreams. - By submitting this application, you acknowledge that your information may be processed by 24-MAG LLC for recruitment and opportunity matching in accordance with our Privacy Policy: https://www.24-mag.com/privacy-policy