Research Engineer — Foundational Models & World Models for Robotics
Rhoda AI
Location
Palo Alto
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Research
At Rhoda AI, we're building the full-stack foundation for the next generation of humanoid robots — from high-performance, software-defined hardware to the foundational models and video world models that control it. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling scenarios unseen in training. We work at the intersection of large-scale learning, robotics, and systems, with a research team that includes researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and beyond. We're not building a feature; we're building a new computing platform for physical work — and with over $400M raised, we're investing aggressively in the R&D, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make that a reality.
We're looking for Research Engineers to work closely with this team on end-to-end model development. This is a hands-on role spanning the full stack: data, infrastructure, model training, and deployment. You'll help turn research ideas into scalable, working systems — including learning and leveraging world models for planning, prediction, and control.
What You'll Do
Design and implement foundational models and world models for large-scale robotic learning
Build and maintain data pipelines (collection, curation, filtering, augmentation) for multimodal robotic data (vision, proprioception, actions, language, video)
Work on pre-training and post-training (fine-tuning, alignment, evaluation) of large models and world models
Implement and experiment with different model architectures
Develop training and evaluation frameworks for world models, including rollout quality, long-horizon prediction, and downstream task performance
Optimize training infrastructure and workflows (distributed training, efficiency, debugging)
Collaborate closely with researchers to translate ideas into robust, scalable implementations
Support experiments, ablations, and real-world deployment on robotic systems
What We're Looking For
Strong software engineering skills with a research mindset
Experience implementing ML models end-to-end, not just running existing code
Familiarity with the full ML pipeline: data → pre-training → post-training → evaluation → deployment
Solid foundation in deep learning and modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX)
Ability to reason about and debug complex learning systems, including world model training and usage
Comfortable working in an ambiguous, fast-moving startup environment
Nice to Have (But Not Required)
Publications at top ML/robotics conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA)
PhD/Masters or equivalent research experience
Experience with world models or generative models for control
Experience working with large models (LLMs, vision-language models, video models, large-scale policy models)
Experience with large-scale training infrastructure (distributed training, clusters, cloud or on-prem systems)
Why This Role
Work with an elite research team from Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and beyond
Work on foundational models and world models for real-world robotics — not toy environments
Tight collaboration between research and engineering (no silos)
Direct connection between research ideas and real robotic behavior
High ownership and impact in a small, ambitious team