Principal Research Scientist

Chewy•Woburn, MA

1d•$213,000 - $300,000•Onsite

About The Position

Chewy Robotics is seeking a Principal Research Scientist to join our Physical AI team in Woburn, MA. This is a senior individual contributor role for a scientist who can define and advance Chewy’s research roadmap in embodied AI for humanoid and other high-DOF robotic systems. You will lead breakthrough work at the intersection of reinforcement learning, imitation learning, vision-language-action models, multimodal perception, whole-body control, manipulation, and sim-to-real adaptation. You will help Chewy develop the next generation of robotic intelligence for physically demanding, high-variability workflows in real operating environments. This role is for a scientist who is equally comfortable doing first-principles thinking and using modern large-scale learning methods. You should be excited to invent new algorithms, build evaluation frameworks, guide technical direction across teams, and turn research ideas into capabilities that work on real robots. Success in this role means raising Chewy’s scientific ambition while also creating measurable progress on hardware. You will partner closely with roboticists, controls engineers, ML engineers, software engineers, and operations stakeholders to develop systems that can perceive, reason, learn, and act safely and robustly in the physical world.

Requirements

PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field
10+ years of relevant experience in robotics research, embodied AI, machine learning, controls, or a closely related domain
Deep expertise in several of the following areas: reinforcement learning, imitation learning or behavior cloning, offline RL or policy improvement from logged data, vision-language-action models or embodied foundation models, robot manipulation and loco-manipulation, whole-body control, MPC, or optimization-based control, system identification, state estimation, or sensor fusion, sim-to-real transfer and domain adaptation
Demonstrated track record of developing novel methods that improved real robot performance, not just offline benchmarks
Strong publication, patent, and/or open-source record in top-tier robotics or machine learning venues such as CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS, ICML, or related forums
Strong software and research engineering skills in Python and C++, with experience in modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch and/or JAX
Experience with robotics tooling and simulation environments such as ROS2, Isaac Lab, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Gazebo, or equivalent platforms
Proven ability to operate as a top-level technical leader in ambiguous environments, influence without authority, and communicate effectively with executive stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Experience training and deploying policies on humanoid robots or other dynamically complex platforms such as legged robots or mobile manipulators
Experience with dexterous or force-sensitive manipulation, deformable object handling, or contact-rich tasks
Experience building or adapting foundation models for robotics, including multimodal representation learning or action modeling
Experience combining learned policies with classical controls, planners, or safety layers for production-grade systems
Experience working on warehouse, logistics, or industrial robotics applications
Experience leading external collaborations with academic labs, research partners, or strategic technical vendors

Responsibilities

Define and lead Chewy’s scientific roadmap for embodied AI and humanoid robot learning, with emphasis on reinforcement learning, imitation learning, VLA-style policy learning, and modern control approaches for real-world robotic systems
Invent, prototype, and validate novel algorithms for manipulation, loco-manipulation, whole-body coordination, multimodal perception, policy adaptation, and task generalization across environments and robot embodiments
Develop learning systems that combine data-driven policies with principled robotics methods such as planning, control, system identification, estimation, and safety-constrained execution
Drive advances in simulation, synthetic data generation, offline and online evaluation, benchmarking, and sim-to-real transfer to accelerate learning and reduce time to deployment
Build and evaluate robot learning pipelines that leverage vision, language, proprioception, force, and touch to enable robust performance on complex physical tasks
Partner with cross-functional teams to translate ambiguous business needs into tractable scientific programs, technical milestones, and experimental roadmaps
Influence the architecture of Chewy’s physical AI stack, including model training strategy, data engines, evaluation methodology, and integration with real robot platforms
Establish technical standards for scientific rigor, experiment design, ablation studies, reproducibility, and model evaluation across the team
Publish, patent, and communicate high-impact work internally and externally, helping strengthen Chewy’s reputation in robotics and embodied AI
Mentor scientists and engineers, raise the bar for technical depth and judgment, and serve as a trusted technical advisor to senior leadership

Benefits

401k
new hire and annual equity grant
annual bonus
medical/Rx insurance
vision insurance
dental insurance
life insurance
disability insurance
hospital indemnity insurance
critical illness insurance
accident insurance
parental leave
family services benefits
backup dependent care
flexible spending accounts
telemedicine
pet adoption reimbursement
employee assistance program
discounts including 10% off pet insurance and 20% off at Chewy.com
unlimited PTO (subject to manager approval)
six paid holidays per year
paid sick and family leave in compliance with applicable state and local regulations