Staff Robot Software, Large Behavior Models

Toyota Research Institute•Cambridge, MA

64d•$240,000 - $360,000

About The Position

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we're on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We're developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we've built a world-class team in Automated Driving, Energy & Materials, Human-Centered AI, Human-Interactive Driving, Large Behavior Models, and Robotics. The Mission Make general-purpose robots a reality. The Challenge We envision a future where robots assist with household chores and cooking, aid the older population in maintaining their independence, and enable people to spend more time on the activities they enjoy most. To achieve this, robots need to be able to operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments. Our mission is to answer the question "What will it take to create truly general-purpose robots that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in settings like human homes with minimal human supervision?". We believe that the answer lies in cultivating large-scale datasets of physical interaction from a variety of sources and building on the latest advances in machine learning to learn general-purpose robot behaviors from this data. Robotics At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we're on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We're developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this ground-breaking shift in mobility, we've built an extraordinary team in Automated Driving, Energy & Materials, Human-Centered AI, Human-Interactive Driving, Large Behavior Models, and Robotics. The Mission Make general-purpose robots a reality. The Challenge We envision a future where robots assist with household chores and cooking, aid the older population in maintaining their independence, and enable people to spend more time on the activities they enjoy most. To achieve this, robots need to be able to operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments. Our mission is to answer the question "What will it take to create truly general-purpose robots that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in settings like human homes with minimal human supervision?". We believe that the answer lies in cultivating large-scale datasets of physical interaction from a variety of sources and building on the latest advances in machine learning to learn general-purpose robot behaviors from this data. Robotics The mission of TRI Robotics is to invent and prove new robotic capabilities required to enable home robots to solve the challenges faced by an aging society. As part of that mission, we are developing a sophisticated suite of open source robotics software called Drake (https://drake.mit.edu (https://drake.mit.edu/) (https://drake.mit.edu/) (https://drake.mit.edu/))), for use in our internal robotics projects and the wider community of advanced robotics researchers. The Team Join Toyota Research Institute's LBM-C division to change the world by creating and shipping useful general-purpose AI-driven robots. Within this division, the hardware team's mission is building a highly scalable fleet of robots capable of performing the same general mobile manipulation tasks as humans, in human-like ways and at human-like speeds, via shared autonomy. Join us to build the future of general-purpose physical automation. The Opportunity We're looking for a driven and hands-on technical leader who will architect and build our next-generation software stack powering our general-purpose humanoid robots. This is a deeply technical role for someone passionate about driving technical excellence and leads by example writing and reviewing production code, designing and debugging complex systems, and mentoring engineers.

Requirements

Deep Hands-On Expertise: 8+ years writing production software for customer-deployed robots or autonomous vehicles, covering the full lifecycle from architecture to deployment. You've debugged robots in the field and know what it takes to ship.
Technical Mastery: Expert-level C++ and Python. Deep understanding of modern robot software stacks, including real-time systems, messaging architectures, and high-throughput data logging. Experience with network optimization is preferred.
Production Robotics Experience: Experience developing and deploying software on real robots operating in unstructured, real-world environments. A strong understanding of how to bridge the gap between systems that work in the lab and those that perform reliably for customers.
Technical Influence: Track record of raising the engineering bar through excellent code, thoughtful design reviews, and hands-on mentorship. You make the engineers around you better through collaboration and mentorship.
Pragmatic Problem Solver: Exceptional at breaking down complex systems, identifying root causes, and making practical engineering tradeoffs under uncertainty.

Nice To Haves

-Experience integrating ML/learning-based autonomy into safety-critical real-time systems
-Expertise in cloud-scale telemetry, logging pipelines, and data architectures for robotics
Deep experience with AR / VR integration for robotic applications.
Expertise in humanoid controls, deployment engineering, and network optimization.
Experience with hardware-accelerated video processing.

Responsibilities

Architect & Build the Core Stack: Design and implement a high-performance robot software stack including real-time control loops, middleware, networking, high-throughput logging pipelines, and immersive teleoperation interfaces. Make informed high-velocity technical decisions under uncertainty.
Own End-to-End Technical Execution: Take complex robotics problems from concept to customer deployment. Debug challenging integration issues, optimize performance bottlenecks, and ensure our robots work reliably at the edge of their physical capabilities.
Technical Leadership Through Doing: Mentor engineers by pairing on code, conducting design reviews, and demonstrating engineering excellence through your own work. Establish patterns and practices that the team can follow by example.
Drive Technical Quality: Champion robust engineering practices including testing, profiling, and systematic debugging. Establish workflows to recreate and debug rare edge cases during deployment. Create the technical foundation that enables the team to quickly move with confidence.
Collaborate Across Disciplines: Work closely with the hardware team to co-design future robots. Collaborate the AI team to deploy innovative learned policies on robots. Coordinate with the operations team to ensure smooth deployment in the field.

Benefits

TRI offers a generous benefits package (including 401(k) eligibility and various paid time off benefits, such as vacation, sick time, and parental leave) and an annual cash bonus structure.

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