Senior VLA Pre-training Engineer
1w ago
150000 –230000 USD / yearEuropeSeniorOnsitedeep learningllmvlmvlapytorchjaxpythondistributed training
Leading humanoid robotics startup seeks Senior VLA Pre-training Engineer to develop foundation models for robotic behavior, serving real industrial environments with significant existing contracts and orders.
About the company
- Our client is a fast-growing humanoid robotics startup building robots for real industrial environments: manufacturing, logistics, warehouses, large-scale physical operations.
- Not research-only - they already have 30,000 pre-orders globally, signed contracts with a major European industrial manufacturer and successful pilots with global engineering leaders in automotive and industrial automation.
About the product
- The VLA (Vision-Language-Action) team is responsible for the core intelligence: how the robot perceives the world, understands instructions, learns new skills, and executes manipulation tasks autonomously.
Responsibilities
- Own the full lifecycle of foundation models for robotic behavior.
- Pre-training and fine-tuning VLA models on large-scale multimodal datasets.
- Building and maintaining data pipelines: collection, curation, synthetic data generation.
- Designing distributed training infrastructure.
- Sim-to-real transfer: validating policies in simulation before real-world deployment.
- Working closely with simulation engineers, data scientists, and embedded teams.
- Shipping models that directly power real robots in production.
Requirements
- 5+ years building deep learning systems (industry or research) with shipped models or published work.
- Hands-on with LLMs, VLMs, or VLA models - architecture, training, fine-tuning.
- Large-scale distributed training: PyTorch DDP, data pipelines, checkpointing.
- Experience with robotics simulators (MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Gazebo) or real robotic systems.
- Strong Python + PyTorch/JAX; you can debug numerics and write production code.
- Self-driven, proactive, communicates clearly.
Nice to have
- Robotics background, sim-to-real experience, OpenVLA or similar VLA frameworks
Conditions
- Compensation: £150,000 – £230,000 gross/year, based on experience.
- London, 100% onsite - daily access to robots, labs, and prototypes.
- Relocation support: up to £8,000 + Skilled Worker Visa sponsorship.
- Benefits: private healthcare, pension (8%), 23 days PTO, equity
How to apply
- We move fast.
Found in@datasciencejobs