Research Engineer, VLA Models

About 1X
We’re an AI and robotics company based in Palo Alto, California, on a mission to build a truly abundant society through general‑purpose robots capable of performing any kind of work autonomously.
We believe that to truly understand the world and grow in intelligence, humanoid robots must live and learn alongside us. That’s why we’re focused on developing friendly home robots designed to integrate seamlessly into everyday life.
We’re looking for curious, driven, and passionate people who want to help shape the future of robotics and AI. If this mission excites you, we’d be thrilled to hear from you and explore how you might contribute to our journey.

Role Overview
As a Research Engineer, Vision-Language Action (VLA) Models, you will train the NEO robot to perform long‑horizon autonomous tasks in unstructured environments. You will take ownership of autonomous capability development across the full lifecycle: from data review and model design, through deployment and ongoing fleet performance monitoring. Your work will involve combining vision, control, and learning to enable whole‑body manipulation and navigation in novel settings.

Responsibilities

• Take extreme ownership over autonomous capabilities: reviewing data, designing model architectures, shipping models, and maintaining performance across the fleet

• Train NEO for whole‑body manipulation and navigation tasks in unseen environments

• Design robust evaluation metrics to support scaling of model pre‑training

• Experiment with state‑of‑the‑art techniques from vision–language models and generative model literature to predict actions

• Collaborate with controls, QA, and data collection teams to deploy reinforcement learning policies to the production fleet

• Strong programming experience in Python (and familiarity with tools like Bazel)

• Experience with frameworks like PyTorch

• Experience with simulation environments (e.g., Isaac Sim, MuJoCo)

• Deep understanding of how autonomous systems generalize to new environments

• Experience designing evaluation metrics and validating models in real or simulated settings

• Ability to coordinate with cross‑functional teams (controls, QA, data) to bring models into production
  

Benefits & Compensation

• Salary Range: $180,000 - $300,000

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k) with company match

• Paid time off and holidays
  

Equal Opportunity Employer
1X is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.

Salary : $180,000 - $300,000