Principal Applied Robotics Engineer

Mayo Clinic • Rochester, MN

4d

About The Position

The Principal Applied Robotics Engineer is the most senior capability-engineering individual contributor in Mayo Clinic’s enterprise robotics portfolio, spanning clinical and surgical robotics, service and mobile robotics, logistics, transport, environmental services, and patient-facing platforms. The role sets engineering direction for robotic behavior—including perception, navigation, manipulation, and autonomy—and serves as the definitive technical resource for the most difficult capability and feasibility problems across enterprise-critical initiatives.

Working closely with research scientists who own forward-looking research, the principal leads hands-on productionization and enterprise-scale evaluation of emerging robotic capabilities without duplicating the research mandate. The role also partners with enterprise architects on standards. It is an individual-contributor position with no direct reports and provides broad functional and technical leadership while modeling stewardship, integrity, and a commitment to developing others in service of patients, staff, and the organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in robotics, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechatronics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, or a related field.
• Ten years of progressively responsible relevant experience, including demonstrated technical leadership of complex initiatives.
• Extensive demonstrated authority engineering and evaluating robotic behavior and autonomy on physical platforms at scale.
• Track record setting technical direction for perception, autonomy, or manipulation.
• Deep simulation-to-reality and learning-based expertise, including approaches such as vision-language-action (VLA) and foundation models.
• Advanced programming experience in C++ and Python and demonstrated experience developing production-quality robotics software.
• Experience with ROS/ROS 2 and related robotics frameworks, tools, and ecosystems.
• Experience integrating and fusing data from robotic sensors such as cameras, depth cameras, LiDAR, force/torque sensors, or other sensing modalities.
• Experience with robotics simulation, testing, and validation technologies such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo, digital twins, hardware-in-the-loop, or simulation-in-the-loop environments.
• Experience with AI/ML techniques applied to robotics, including computer vision, robot learning, reinforcement learning, foundation models, or other approaches to intelligent autonomous behavior.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating autonomous robotic capabilities in complex, dynamic, human-centered environments.
• Experience serving as a technical lead or senior individual contributor across multidisciplinary robotics initiatives.
• Experience developing robotic or autonomous systems for healthcare, medical devices, logistics, industrial automation, or other safety- or mission-critical environments.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s or doctoral degree in a related field.
• Leadership of emerging-technology assessment for humanoid and generalist systems.
• Experience in healthcare or comparable safety-critical settings.

Responsibilities

• Set engineering direction for applied robotic behavior, including perception, navigation, manipulation, and autonomy across the enterprise portfolio.
• Serve as the definitive technical resource for complex robotics capability and feasibility problems.
• Lead hands-on productionization and enterprise-scale evaluation of emerging robotic capabilities in partnership with research scientists.
• Partner with enterprise architects on robotics standards.
• Provide technical leadership across multiple enterprise-critical initiatives.
• Lead assessment of emerging technologies for humanoid and generalist robotic systems.
• Evaluate the performance, reliability, safety, and failure modes of autonomous robotic capabilities in complex, dynamic, human-centered environments.
• Translate emerging research into scalable, production-ready robotic capabilities.
• Develop others while modeling stewardship and integrity.

What This Job Offers

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