Research Scientist, RL for Dexterous Manipulation, Atlas
Boston DynamicsWaltham Office (POST)
Posted May 12, 2026
175000 - 220000 USD
Full Time
About the Company
Boston Dynamics builds advanced mobile manipulation robots with remarkable mobility, dexterity perception and agility. We use sensor-based controls and computation to unlock the potential of complex mechanisms. Our world-class development teams develop prototypes for wild new concepts, do build-test-build engineering and field testing and transform successful designs into robot products. Our goal is to change your idea of what robots can do.
Job Description
Research Scientist, RL for Dexterous Manipulation, Atlas - using reinforcement learning to solve dexterous manipulation tasks, leading research projects on visual sim-to-real transfer and post-training of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models.
Requirements
- PhD, in ML, Robotics, or a related field or a MS with 3+ years of experience
- Track record of first-author publications at top venues (CoRL, RSS, ICLR, NeuRIPS)
- Demonstrated experience training policies for dexterous or contact-rich manipulation
- Hands-on experience with VLA models, diffusion policies, or large behavior models
- Proficient in PyTorch and/or JAX, with experience training models at scale
- Strong software fundamentals and the ability to ship research code that runs reliably
Benefits
- Medical
- Dental vision
- 401(k)
- Paid time off
- Annual bonus structure