Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Robotics

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine • Santa Clara, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a highly skilled and innovative Senior Machine Learning Engineer to apply the latest advances in learning-based manipulation to improve the performance and safety of surgical robotics. In this hands-on role you will rapidly design models, implement algorithms, and bring ML-trained manipulation behaviors from research to real-world robotic hardware in unstructured environments. As a senior member of the team, you will be responsible for mentoring engineers and elevating the team's overall technical capabilities.

Requirements

• PhD/MS in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Robotics, or related field and 0+/3+ years of work experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience implementing and deploying ML models for robotic manipulation and experience with large multimodal ML models.
• Mastery of Python for prototyping and experience in C++ for deployment on robotic hardware.
• Strong proficiency in deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Experience optimizing ML models for real-time performance on robotic hardware.
• Strong experience with simulation platforms (e.g., MuJoCo, Isaac Sim) and sim-to-real transfer.
• Understanding of robot kinematics, dynamics, sensing, and control.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with build tools and version control systems.
• Exposure to agile development processes, CI/CD, and issue tracking tools.

Responsibilities

• Developing and implementing ML algorithms for surgical robotic task automation.
• Building pipelines for data collection, training, testing and deployment of ML models.
• Leverage simulation for prototyping, training, and transfer to robot hardware.
• Define and evaluate performance metrics for surgical tasks and implement rigorous testing protocols.
• Collaborate with software and controls teams to deploy learned policies and ensure safe and reliable execution.
• Optimize models for onboard real-time performance on robotic hardware.
• Stay current with the latest robotics and AI research, mentor team members, and drive innovation.

Benefits

• Vacation –120 hours per calendar year
• Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington –56 hours per calendar year
• Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays –13 days per calendar year
• Work, Personal and Family Time - up to 40 hours per calendar year
• Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of the birth/adoption/foster care of a child
• Condolence Leave – 30 days for an immediate family member: 5 days for an extended family member
• Caregiver Leave – 10 days
• Volunteer Leave – 4 days
• Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours

What This Job Offers

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