Deft AI •

Machine Learning Engineer

On-site San Francisco, United States Full-time 3+ yrs

What you'll do
● Design and develop a modular robot autonomy stack that composes Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models with purpose-built modules to enable grasping and dexterous behaviors in unstructured environments
● Develop action refinement and safety layers that post-process VLA outputs — constraint satisfaction, collision and force guards, smoothing, and runtime monitors for safety-critical deployment
● Architect clean interfaces and abstractions around base VLA models so they can be swapped, benchmarked, and upgraded as the SOTA evolves — keeping the stack model-agnostic
● Design and maintain robust data collection and curation pipelines for production robot fleets
● Build reliable, high-speed robot autonomy software stack optimized for inference
performance
● Advance SOTA dexterous manipulation architecture through novel methodologies while bridging theory & practice—real customer use-cases with clear success criteria.


Required Qualifications
● PhD or MS degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or equivalent technical discipline
● Deep expertise in machine learning fundamentals, reinforcement learning, and associated
frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Ray, etc.)
● 3+ years of proven track record developing and deploying ML systems from research through production implementation
● Hands-on experience with model lifecycle management including training, deployment, and maintenance in production settings

Preferred Qualifications
● Authored or co-authored peer-reviewed publications in robotics or related fields
● Hands-on experience designing and implementing bimanual manipulation tech stacks
with imitation learning or RL-based methods
● Background in real-time ML inference systems, simulation-to-reality transfer, or advanced
reinforcement learning implementations

Benefits
● We support publishing at top robotics/ML venues and presenting at conferences (travel + time fully covered).
● Medical, dental & vision plans
● Daily meals stipend


Hiring Process
● Phone screen + 3 virtual technical interviews + onsite


Expected Compensation
● $150,000 - $200,000 annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits
● The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.

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