
Learning & Development Lead, Operations at Physical Intelligence (San Francisco, CA)
Physical Intelligence· San Francisco, CA·
Role details
Job description
Learning & Development Lead — Operations
Role Overview
The Learning & Development Lead owns training and readiness for Physical Intelligence's robot operator workforce. This person is responsible for designing and running the systems that take a new operator from candidate work trial through their first 30–60 days, with the goal of getting people productive quickly while maintaining a high quality bar. They also own ongoing training as the work changes. When researchers introduce new robot workflows, tasks, tools, or operating procedures, the Learning & Development Lead translates those changes into training that can be rolled out quickly and consistently across the operation. This is a highly operational training role. We are looking for someone who has built or owned training programs for hourly or frontline employees and knows how to turn complex work into a simple, repeatable learning process.
Responsibilities
Operator Trials & Readiness
- Own the operator work-trial program and ensure candidates are evaluated consistently.
- Maintain clear trial standards, evaluator guidance, and scoring criteria.
- Partner with recruiting and operations to continuously improve what the trial predicts about future operator success.
New-Hire Onboarding
- Build and run onboarding from day one through the first 30–60 days.
- Define what an operator should know and be able to do at each stage of ramp.
- Create training plans, checklists, certification steps, and readiness milestones.
- Identify struggling operators early and create clear paths for remediation.
- Continuously improve time-to-productivity for new hires.
New Workflow Training
- Partner with researchers and operations teams when new robot tasks, systems, or processes are introduced.
- Learn new workflows quickly and translate them into clear training materials and operating instructions.
- Design the rollout plan needed to train a large operator population quickly.
- Track who has been trained and verify that the training actually resulted in correct execution.
- Maintain consistency as training expands across shifts, teams, and locations.
Training Operations
- Maintain a clear training calendar and ensure training happens when required.
- Coordinate trainers, operators, shift leads, and researchers.
- Keep training materials current as workflows change.
- Build repeatable processes so training does not depend on tribal knowledge.
- Track training completion, readiness, and performance metrics.
Continuous Improvement
- Use operator performance data and feedback to identify gaps in training.
- Work with operations leaders to understand recurring quality or productivity issues.
- Determine whether problems are caused by training, instructions, process, tooling, or something else.
- Continuously simplify and improve how operators learn.
What We're Looking For
- Experience owning training, onboarding, or workforce development programs for hourly or frontline employees.
- Demonstrated ability to get new employees productive quickly.
- Experience building structured ramp programs with clear milestones and standards.
- Strong operational organization and follow-through.
- Able to turn ambiguous or technical workflows into simple, teachable processes.
- Comfortable managing trainers, who are responsible for training large groups of people on new procedures under tight timelines.
- Strong written and verbal communication.
- Able to work effectively with both highly technical stakeholders, trainers, and frontline operators.
- Comfortable in an environment where processes and requirements change frequently.
- Uses data and observation to improve training rather than relying only on subjective feedback.
Experience in robotics is not required.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Why work at Physical Intelligence
- Culture: Described as a “pure company” – internally driven by research needs, not external market demands. Highly collaborative, with a mix of engineers, scientists, and roboticists working together.
- Work Environment: Hybrid/in-office – most roles require on-site presence in San Francisco (396 Treat Ave), though some remote flexibility exists. In-office setting with a “no reception” vibe, open lab space with robot stations.
- Growth: Team has scaled from ~80 (Jan 2026) to 163 (mid-2026) and is still hiring across research, ML infra, hardware, and engineering roles. Plans to grow “as slowly as possible” to maintain quality.
- Perks & Engineering Highlights: Access to cutting-edge robotics hardware and compute resources; opportunity to publish research and open-source code; exposure to a wide variety of real-world automation challenges (e.g., robots learning to fold pants, peel vegetables, make espresso). Employees come from top institutions like Berkeley, Stanford, Google, NVIDIA, and Anduril.