---
title: 'AI Research Engineering Lead at Mimic Robotics'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-research-engineering-lead-mimic-robotics-zurich-msxz97tz8s9e'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-21'
---

# AI Research Engineering Lead at Mimic Robotics

- **Company:** Mimic Robotics
- **Location:** Zurich, Switzerland
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-21
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/mimicrobotics-com/am9icG9zdDq8Vyl3mZDBgCoobJxCrQ_c

## Job description

mimic robotics is a frontier physical AI company building the full stack of general-purpose dexterous manipulation. Founded in 2024 by ETH Zurich researchers, mimic pioneered Video-Action Models for robotics while also developing in-house dexterous hand hardware. Our growing team brings together world-class researchers working across our offices in Zurich and San Francisco.

We are hiring an AI Research Engineering Lead in Zurich. You will co-lead the AI team, focusing your efforts on pushing the frontier of multi-modal, video-action models (VAMs) targeting higher generalisation capabilities and improving deployment to real world industrial tasks.

## Key Responsibilities

- Drive Training & Architecture: Lead research, architecture design, and training for large-scale, multi-task foundation models across pre- and post-training.
- Scale the Data Flywheel: Manage the end-to-end data pipeline—from raw human teleoperation data specification to model training, fine-tuning, and real-world robot evals.
- Lead & Mentor: Guide AI research engineers and scientists, setting high standards for ML engineering, experimental velocity, and empirical evaluation.
- Cross-Functional Deployment: Partner with hardware and robotics teams to align data collection efforts with benchmarking of trained models and stable real-world deployment.

## Requirements & Qualifications

What You Bring: Research Background: PhD in CS/ML or equivalent PhD-level industry research experience (e.g., Senior/Staff AI Scientist at a frontier lab). We heavily prioritize generalist ML and deep pre-training over pure robotics or classical control/RL background. Generative Modeling at Scale: 3+ years directly building and scaling generative architectures (diffusion, flow matching, autoregressive models, VLMs, or video models). Distributed Engineering: 4+ years of hands-on PyTorch (or similar) development, including multi-GPU pre-training setups (FSDP, DeepSpeed, Megatron) and scaling law mechanics. Technical Leadership: Proven track record of mentoring junior engineers, supervising PhD interns, or leading collaborative research projects. Location: Based in or willing to relocate to Zurich for full-time, in-person work (San Francisco based candidates will also be considered). Out of Scope: This is a deep model-building role. Candidates limited to classical control/RL without generative models, or application-level RAG/API wrappers, will not be considered.

## What We Offer

- Competitive Package: Base salary + substantial equity stake.
- Frontier Impact: Direct ownership of core AI strategy alongside world-class talent in a flat, fast-moving environment.
- Resources & Perks: Modern GPU compute, hardware test benches, free gym/sports subscriptions, team meals, and full relocation support.

You will have the opportunity to shape a robotics & AI company from the ground up. In flat hierarchies you will work directly with the founders and some of the best talents in the robotics space. At mimic, you are accepted for who you are. As part of our ongoing journey towards creating a diverse and inclusive environment we encourage everyone to apply and we are looking forward to you bringing along your knowledge, personal experiences, and fresh perspectives. Together we can solve some of the greatest challenges in robotics.

## About Mimic Robotics

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mimic Robotics builds general-purpose robots for factory floors, using frontier AI and video-action models to achieve dexterous, autonomous manipulation in unstructured environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; $20.8M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Zurich, Switzerland (with a research unit in San Francisco, USA)
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Benedek Forrai (Co-Founder & Lead Roboticist), Stephan-Daniel Gravert (Co-Founder & CPO), Robert Katzschmann (Co-founder & Scientific Advisor)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics engineering / AI-powered industrial automation
- **Target customers**: B2B – manufacturing, logistics, and other operations that involve complex, tedious manual tasks
- **Mission**: “enable humanity to create, produce and manufacture at will, with minimum effort” [mimicrobotics.com](https://www.mimicrobotics.com/about)

## Products & Services
- **Video-Action Models**: A proprietary AI paradigm that leverages large-scale video pre-training to predict and execute robot actions, generalizing across unseen tasks and adapting to real-world variability.
- **MIMIC-ONE Hand**: A 16‑DoF tendon‑driven humanoid hand controlled by a diffusion‑based architecture, achieving up to 93.3% task success on unseen tasks.
- **LAD (Latent Action Diffusion)**: A framework that aligns action spaces across human hands, robotic hands, and grippers via contrastive learning, enabling a single policy to control multiple robot embodiments.
- **MAPLE**: A research collaboration with ETH Zurich and Microsoft Research that learns dexterous manipulation priors from large‑scale egocentric video of human hand interactions.
- **Robot Stations**: Available in one‑ or two‑arm configurations, mounted on a stationary table or an autonomous mobile platform – platform‑agnostic to fit the customer’s specific use case.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$20.8 million** (as of 2025, including a $16M seed round led by Speedinvest and Elaia, plus grants from Venture Kick, Innosuisse, and others) [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/mimicrobotics)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Speedinvest, Elaia, Venture Kick, Innosuisse; research partners include ETH Zurich and Microsoft Research
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount of 40 employees (~166.7% YoY growth)
  - LinkedIn following of 18,395 (+273.6% YoY)
  - Featured among Switzerland’s most exciting emerging ventures
  - Active job postings for AI, robotics, and field engineering roles

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary Video-Action Models** that outperform traditional VLA (Vision-Language-Action) models by using native video pre-training with rich physics representations.
- **Cross‑embodiment learning** via LAD, allowing a single model to control different robot hands and grippers, delivering ~25% improvement in manipulation success.
- **Full‑stack approach** from AI research to hardware design (custom 16‑DoF humanoid hand) and deployment in customer facilities.
- **World‑class team** drawing talent from Google DeepMind, Tesla Optimus, ETH Zurich, MIT, and Stanford.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling from research to real‑world customer deployments: “delivering value to our customers and their everyday operational reality.”
- Expanding the team across AI research, hardware, robotics, data operations, and business development.
- Building a “general purpose robot” that can be rapidly adapted to new use cases, driving down the cost and complexity of industrial automation.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Bias toward action” – solving real problems on factory floors, not just publishing papers. Tight‑knit team of ~50 people from diverse backgrounds.
- **Work environment**: In‑office roles in Zurich (HQ) and San Francisco; roles include AI Research Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Embedded Systems Engineer, and Field Engineer.
- **Engineering culture**: Cutting‑edge AI research combined with hands‑on hardware and systems work; collaboration with top academic labs (ETH Zurich, MIT).
- **Growth opportunity**: Join a fast‑growing startup (166% headcount increase) at the frontier of physical AI, with direct impact on product and customer success.

## Sources
1. [mimicrobotics.com – Homepage](https://www.mimicrobotics.com/)
2. [mimicrobotics.com – About](https://www.mimicrobotics.com/about)
3. [mimicrobotics.com – Careers](https://www.mimicrobotics.com/careers)
4. [jobs.gem.com – Mimic Robotics Open Positions](https://jobs.gem.com/mimicrobotics-com)
5. [linkedin.com – Mimic Robotics Company Page](https://linkedin.com/company/mimicrobotics)

## Other roles at Mimic Robotics

- [Deployment Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/deployment-strategist-mimic-robotics-zurich-s6bx52fr10mq) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Senior Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mechanical-engineer-mimic-robotics-zurich-51yxzfsjef7t) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Systems Engineer – Infrastructure & Fleet](https://feeny.ai/job/systems-engineer-infrastructure-fleet-mimic-robotics-zurich-ne7z6p73xv5d) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Senior Electrical Engineer (Hardware)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-electrical-engineer-hardware-mimic-robotics-zurich-agnmak6y1gy3) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Shift Lead (Data Collection)](https://feeny.ai/job/shift-lead-data-collection-mimic-robotics-zurich-xwtv9jewhp20) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Robot Operator (80 - 100%)](https://feeny.ai/job/robot-operator-80-100-mimic-robotics-zurich-enfps61bwgc8) — Zurich, Switzerland
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- [Field / Site Reliability Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/field-site-reliability-engineering-intern-mimic-robotics-zurich-3gxgxjf1mwt9) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Field Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/field-engineer-mimic-robotics-zurich-cgyajzmvrsg7) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Data Collector / part-time job / 8 to 40 hours a week](https://feeny.ai/job/data-collector-part-time-job-8-to-40-hours-a-week-mimic-robotics-zurich-kex12q53kebp) — Zurich, Switzerland