AI Research Engineering Lead

Mimic Robotics • Zurich,

1d • Onsite

About The Position

mimic robotics is a frontier physical AI company building the full stack of general-purpose dexterous manipulation. Founded in 2024 by ETH Zurich researchers, mimic pioneered Video-Action Models for robotics while also developing in-house dexterous hand hardware. Our growing team brings together world-class researchers working across our offices in Zurich and San Francisco.

We are hiring an AI Research Engineering Lead in Zurich. You will co-lead the AI team, focusing your efforts on pushing the frontier of multi-modal, video-action models (VAMs) targeting higher generalisation capabilities and improving deployment to real world industrial tasks.

Requirements

• PhD in CS/ML or equivalent PhD-level industry research experience (e.g., Senior/Staff AI Scientist at a frontier lab). We heavily prioritize generalist ML and deep pre-training over pure robotics or classical control/RL background.
• 3+ years directly building and scaling generative architectures (diffusion, flow matching, autoregressive models, VLMs, or video models).
• 4+ years of hands-on PyTorch (or similar) development, including multi-GPU pre-training setups (FSDP, DeepSpeed, Megatron) and scaling law mechanics.
• Proven track record of mentoring junior engineers, supervising PhD interns, or leading collaborative research projects.
• Based in or willing to relocate to Zurich for full-time, in-person work (San Francisco based candidates will also be considered).
• Candidates limited to classical control/RL without generative models, or application-level RAG/API wrappers, will not be considered.

Responsibilities

• Drive Training & Architecture: Lead research, architecture design, and training for large-scale, multi-task foundation models across pre- and post-training.
• Scale the Data Flywheel: Manage the end-to-end data pipeline—from raw human teleoperation data specification to model training, fine-tuning, and real-world robot evals.
• Lead & Mentor: Guide AI research engineers and scientists, setting high standards for ML engineering, experimental velocity, and empirical evaluation.
• Cross-Functional Deployment: Partner with hardware and robotics teams to align data collection efforts with benchmarking of trained models and stable real-world deployment.

Benefits

• Competitive Package: Base salary + substantial equity stake.
• Frontier Impact: Direct ownership of core AI strategy alongside world-class talent in a flat, fast-moving environment.
• Resources & Perks: Modern GPU compute, hardware test benches, free gym/sports subscriptions, team meals, and full relocation support.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree