Humanoid Locomotion Engineer

Persona AI • Houston, TX

6h

About The Position

Persona AI is developing and commercializing rugged, multi-purpose humanoid robots that perform real work. Persona’s founding team has a decades-long history in humanoid robotics, bionics, and product development delivering robust hardware that has touched the stars, worked miles below the surface of the ocean, and even roamed Disney Parks. Our mission is focused squarely on shipping beautiful, reliable products at massive scale, while building a customer-focused team to achieve these aims. We're looking for exceptional engineers who dream big, thrive on challenges, and love seeing their designs come to life. We are primarily interested in candidates who have been hands-on in the development of products released to market, in the fields of autonomy, robotics, consumer products, medical devices, automotive or aerospace. We also value advanced degrees and deep expertise. As one of the inaugural Engineers at Persona, you will have an incredible opportunity to shape the design of Persona’s humanoid robots, while also helping set the culture of the company as it grows. If you're passionate about cutting-edge technology and want to be part of a world-class team that's driving the future of manufacturing and humanoids, we'd love to hear from you. Your Role: Develop and implement whole-body locomotion control strategies for humanoid motion using reinforcement learning and/or model-based control. Contribute to the Persona loco-manipulation control stack by developing tools and algorithms for execution on a humanoid robot. Contribute to simulation and training pipelines: validate and improve robot modeling in simulation. Simulate, test and validate control strategies in both simulation and real-world experiments. Collaborate with hardware, perception and planning teams to refine system performance and robustness.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Experience in bipedal locomotion control, legged robotics, and dynamic systems.
• Expertise in model-based control techniques (e.g., inverse dynamics, MPC) or learning based locomotion (e.g. reinforcement learning, PPO)
• Experience developing controllers / policies for legged robots with hardware in the real world.
• Experience with physics-based simulation tools (e.g., IsaacLab, MuJoCo).
• Proficiency in Python and either Rust, C, or C++ as well as capable of writing high quality software.

Nice To Haves

• Background in kinematics, dynamics, and optimization for robotic motion.
• Proficiency in either Rust, C, or C++ for low latency control implementation.
• Familiarity with DDS, ROS, RCP or other middleware for robotic systems.
• Knowledge of hardware actuation, compliance control, and force-based interactions.
• Understanding of energy-efficient locomotion strategies for long-duration operation.
• Published papers at top ML/Robotics conferences (ICML, ICRA, CoRL, RSS, NeurIPS).
• Experience with cloud computing to develop models, store data, etc. (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement whole-body locomotion control strategies for humanoid motion using reinforcement learning and/or model-based control.
• Contribute to the Persona loco-manipulation control stack by developing tools and algorithms for execution on a humanoid robot.
• Contribute to simulation and training pipelines: validate and improve robot modeling in simulation.
• Simulate, test and validate control strategies in both simulation and real-world experiments.
• Collaborate with hardware, perception and planning teams to refine system performance and robustness.

Benefits

• You'll shape technology that's redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.
• Work alongside passionate teammates who value diversity, creativity, and continuous learning.
• Enjoy full access to advanced prototyping tools, labs, and the freedom to experiment and innovate.
• We offer competitive compensation, excellent benefits, flexible work environment, and equity opportunities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level