Software Engineering Internship, Manipulation

Persona AI Inc • Houston, TX

10d • Onsite

About The Position

Persona AI is building humanoid robots for the most demanding environments in heavy industry — shipyards, steel mills, fabrication facilities, and offshore platforms — performing welding, grinding, maintenance, inspection, and material-handling work that is dangerous, physically demanding, and increasingly difficult to staff. We are backed by leading strategic and financial investors and engaged with global industrial leaders across Korea, Japan, the United States, and Singapore. Korea is the center of gravity for our early commercial strategy, anchored by relationships with the world’s leading shipbuilders and steelmakers. Our work spans both the robot platform itself and the systems, partners, and playbooks required to deploy it at scale.

Requirements

• Currently pursuing a BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical/Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Coursework, lab research, or project experience (capstone projects, robotics competitions, personal projects) involving control and manipulation of robotic or humanoid arms.
• Foundational knowledge of motion planning, control theory, and optimization.
• Programming proficiency in C++ and/or Python.
• Exposure to relevant robotics libraries or tools (e.g., ROS, MoveIt!, Drake, OpenRAVE) through coursework or projects.
• Familiarity with deep learning fundamentals as applied to robotics or manipulation.
• Some exposure to computer vision concepts, such as sensors, point clouds, segmentation, and object detection, through coursework or projects.
• A strong desire to learn quickly and contribute in a fast-paced startup environment.

Nice To Haves

• Project or research experience with contact modeling, force/torque estimation, or tactile sensing for dexterous tasks.
• Exposure to machine learning for dexterous manipulation, such as learning-based grasp strategies, behavior cloning, or reinforcement learning.
• Published research related to manipulation.
• Prior internship or hands-on experience in a robotics, autonomy, or hardware startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Help design and implement dexterous manipulation algorithms for humanoid robots with high-DOF, multi-fingered hands, working closely with senior engineers.
• Contribute to the manipulation pipeline (perception, grasping, trajectory optimization, motion planning, and control) on tasks like precise grasping, dual-arm manipulation, and in-hand object manipulation.
• Support the implementation and testing of control strategies for dexterous manipulation, including force/motion control and visual/tactile servoing.
• Assist with integrating manipulation components into the humanoid robot's whole-body controller and loco-manipulation efforts.
• Build and iterate on digital-twin simulation environments for algorithm development using simulators such as MuJoCo and Isaac Sim.
• Run and help design tests in both simulated and real-world environments, and help analyze the results.
• Partner with the machine learning team to help train and deploy models for advanced manipulation tasks.
• Stay current on manipulation research and bring relevant ideas, traditional and deep learning-based, back to the team.

Benefits

• Full-time term opportunities across three upcoming cohorts: Fall 2026, Spring 2027, Summer 2027
• Paired 1:1 with a senior engineer mentor
• Intern group lunches
• Company-wide learning lunches
• Team activities

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: No Education Listed