---
title: 'Research Member of Technical Staff- Post-training & Robot Learning at Rhoda AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-member-of-technical-staff-post-training-robot-learning-rhoda-ai-5smr9h5vwftm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Research Member of Technical Staff- Post-training & Robot Learning at Rhoda AI

- **Company:** Rhoda AI
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-05-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/2be00e8d-a7dd-44a8-86f8-94a2b848c40e/application

**Skills:** Robot policy learning, Imitation learning, Behavior cloning, PyTorch, Reinforcement Learning, Reward design, Online RL training, Vision, Proprioception, Machine Learning, Online RL training loops, Robotics, Autonomous driving, Physical AI, Teleoperation systems, Robot demonstration collection, ROS/ROS2, Real-time control systems, Simulation environments, Video generation models

> Design and implement RL training pipelines and post-training pipelines to adapt web-pretrained video models for real robot tasks. The role involves developing causal video generation models, optimizing policy performance through reward design and online data collection, and building evaluation frameworks for physica...

## Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality. We're looking for Research Scientists and Research Engineers with deep robotics or autonomous systems domain knowledge to adapt our web-pretrained video model to real robot tasks. Post-training at Rhoda means taking a causal video generation model pretrained on internet-scale data and fine-tuning it on robot-collected demonstrations to produce reliable, generalizable behavior — with as little task-specific data as possible. We hire across levels — from senior to staff.

## What You'll Do

- Design and implement RL training pipelines to improve robot policy performance beyond what imitation learning alone achieves — reward design, online data collection, and policy optimization
- Develop and apply RL algorithms (PPO, GRPO, or similar) adapted to the video prediction setting, including reward modeling and feedback collection strategies for physical task performance
- Design and implement broader post-training pipelines: supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and behavioral alignment on robot-collected demonstration data
- Work on the inverse dynamics model that translates video predictions into executable robot actions
- Build evaluation frameworks for post-trained policies: task success, generalization to novel objects and environments, and failure mode analysis on real hardware
- Research methods to efficiently adapt models to new tasks with minimal demonstration data, including in-context generalization and few-shot adaptation
- Identify failure modes and systematic weaknesses in deployed robot policies and drive targeted improvements
- Iterate quickly between simulation and real robot evaluation to close the feedback loop
- Collaborate with the pre-training team to surface what capabilities are missing from the base model and need to be addressed upstream

## What We're Looking For

- Hands-on experience with robot systems, robotic policy learning, or autonomous systems in an industry or research setting (robotics, self-driving, or similar physical AI domains)
- Strong understanding of robot policy learning: imitation learning, behavior cloning, and how RL builds on top of it
- Practical familiarity with real robot hardware, deployment constraints, and sensor modalities (vision, proprioception)
- Solid ML skills with hands-on PyTorch experience
- Ability to diagnose policy failures, reason about distribution shift, and iterate effectively on data and training strategies
- Comfort with ambiguity and fast-changing research priorities
- Staff-level candidates are expected to define technical direction and drive research strategy independently; senior candidates execute complex projects with strong fundamentals and growing scope

## Nice to Have (But Not Required)

- Hands-on experience with reinforcement learning — reward design, policy optimization, and online RL training loops — applied to real or near-real environments (robotics, games, simulated physics, or similar); this is a significant plus
- Prior industry experience in robotics, autonomous driving, or physical AI (e.g., manipulation, mobile robotics, self-driving stacks)
- Experience with teleoperation systems or robot demonstration collection at scale
- Familiarity with robot middleware (ROS/ROS2) and real-time control systems
- Experience with simulation environments for robotics (MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Genesis)
- Understanding of video generation models and how they connect to action prediction
- PhD in Robotics, ML, or a related field
- Publication record at ICRA, CoRL, RSS, NeurIPS, or related venues

## Why This Role

- Your work is what makes our robots actually perform tasks reliably in the real world — the direct connection between pre-trained capability and deployed behavior
- Work at a rare intersection: state-of-the-art video generation models applied to real robot hardware, not simulation
- Fast feedback loop between model changes and real robot performance
- High ownership on a small team where robotics domain expertise is core to the mission

## About Rhoda AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Rhoda AI builds robot foundation models that learn from internet-scale video to enable manipulation-capable robots to generalize in real-world industrial environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed + Series A; $680M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, CA, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jagdeep Singh (CEO), Eric Chan (Chief Scientist), Changan Chen (Chief Research Officer), Andrew Wooten, Gordon Wetzstein (Scientific Advisor) [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware
- **Target customers**: B2B – industrial enterprises in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce
- **Mission/purpose**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” and “Designing intelligence for the real world” – deploying general-purpose robot foundation models that adapt to the variability of commercial and industrial environments. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) | [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Products & Services
- **Rhoda Robot Platform (Hardware + Software)**: A turnkey robotic system with custom actuators (25kg rated, 40kg peak payload), safety-rated vision, wheel-base, and brakes in every actuator. The platform runs the **Direct Video Action** model, which pre-trains on over a million real-world videos and post-trains on task-specific robot data. Long-context windows enable single-shot learning from human demonstrations without retraining. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **FutureVision Intelligence Layer**: A proprietary architecture that handles real-world industrial tasks autonomously by generalizing beyond conventional VLA pipelines. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Deployment Services**: End-to-end solutions for tasks such as returns processing, bearing decanting, container breakdown, and material transport in logistics and e-commerce facilities. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding **$680M** – Seed round $67.4M (April 2024), Series A $162.6M (April 2025), and Series A $450M (March 2026) with 4 investors. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not individually named in available sources; partners include customers in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth of **+20% monthly** (LinkedIn reports 55 employees; Built In reports 73 employees – conflicting data). Talent sourced from companies like QuantumScape, Flexiv Robotics, Scale AI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and Stanford University. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) | [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Direct Video Action architecture** with web-scale video pre-training gives a strong prior on motion, physics, and dynamics, enabling generalization beyond lab settings.
- **Custom high-performance actuators** (25kg rated, 40kg peak) with safety-rated brakes and vision – designed for 3+ years of continuous operation at rated payload.
- **Long-context in-context learning** allows the robot to perform tasks single-shot from human demonstrations without retraining.
- **Turnkey industrial deployments** that handle ambiguity and variability (e.g., debris, transparent bags, heavy boxes) – tasks customers initially believed could not be automated. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling robot intelligence through a pre-training/post-training paradigm, moving from controlled labs to reliable production environments.
- Expanding commercial deployments across automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce verticals.
- Pursuing a path to **physical AGI** by combining foundation models with custom hardware for real-world adaptability. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” – emphasis on hard problems, first-principles thinking, and category-defining systems. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Work policy**: Hybrid workspace (employees combine remote and on-site work), with offices in Mountain View and Palo Alto, CA. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Engineering culture**: Strong research focus (Chief Research Officer, Chief Scientist, many research engineers/scientists). Recent job postings include Research Scientist, Robot Perception Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Fullstack Engineer, and Product Manager. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the company is well-funded ($680M) and at an early stage (founded 2024), offering significant growth opportunity and impact.

## Sources
1. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) – Company website (product, technology, commercial applications)
2. [rhoda.ai/careers](https://www.rhoda.ai/careers) – Careers page
3. [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team) – Leadership team and co-founders
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – Built In profile (employee count, offices, job listings, hybrid policy)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – LinkedIn company page (funding, headcount, executive list, talent sources)

## Other roles at Rhoda AI

- [Staff Product Manager- Robot & Fleet Interfaces](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-manager-robot-fleet-interfaces-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-sw5va827cxvb) — Mountain View, CA
- [Associate Engineering Product Manager- Robot Data Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-engineering-product-manager-robot-data-systems-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-p6pw133hymk0) — Mountain View, CA
- [Robot Software Engineer Internship](https://feeny.ai/job/robot-software-engineer-internship-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-3s3s0rkqmbkw) — Mountain View, CA
- [Social Media & Content Lead- AI Research](https://feeny.ai/job/social-media-content-lead-ai-research-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-09kzs6nda5w7) — Mountain View, CA
- [Research Member of Technical Staff- Training Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/research-member-of-technical-staff-training-systems-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-n7d7bvemaev0) — Mountain View, CA
- [Field Robotics Deployment Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/field-robotics-deployment-lead-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-v91gfb5byq4a) — Mountain View, CA
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- [Robotics Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-test-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-fawz7jcaj9pv) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior Hardware Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-hardware-reliability-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-tb5a3r2wpf2a) — Mountain View, CA