Senior Robotics Engineer / Postdoctoral Researcher with Lab Management Responsibilities 50 - 100 %

Description

You manage and maintain Physical AI research and teaching equipment and multiple laboratory spaces, work with industrial partners on a regular basis, and participate in research projects together with our teams at our Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI).

Responsibilities

• 30% of employment: Being the go-to person at the CAI for all aspects of our robotics laboratories and all related equipment, including industrial robot arms, sensors, various humanoid robots, a fleet of quadrupeds and other research and teaching equipment.
• Manage and maintain local servers, networks, onboard computers and cloud-based infrastructure (e.g. simulation environments, training pipelines).
• Employment exceeding 30%: Participation in applied research and development projects as senior robotics engineer / postdoctoral researcher in the EMA research group (reinforcement learning, large multi-modal models, agentic embodied AI systems, publications, open-source code contributions etc.).
• Working in a dynamic environment that currently includes planning, procurement, building, and operations (including lab safety).
• Collaborating with the heads of both robotics groups at the CAI (Industrial AI + Embodied Mobile Agents) and interfacing with their researchers and students to continually adapt the robotics laboratories to user needs, provide training and best practices etc.

Qualifications

• We are looking for a pragmatic person with a strong drive to build things that work and are appealing to use (a “maker").
• Strong background with experience with real robots (including prototyping, modifying robots with off-the-shelf equipment), machine learning / deep learning, and programming, with a master's or PhD degree in computer science or a comparable background.
• Previous experience setting up, maintaining or managing multiple robotic platforms and related infrastructure/labs are beneficial.
• Proven competencies in robotics including ROS / ROS 2, PCL, OpenCV, the NVIDIA Jetson ecosystem, and frameworks such as Nav2 or MoveIt.
• Ideally, you have some experience with machine learning applied to robotics and basic distributed systems infrastructure (e.g. scikit-learn, PyTorch, CUDA, Docker + Kubernetes) and server administration (comfortable with Linux, basic networking knowledge, hardware setups typical in robotic systems).
• Strong AI-related research track record (e.g. proven by publications), ideally related to robotics or computer vision.
• Fluency in English and German as well as the capacity to interact on equal footing with management, researchers and students is important.
• Work independently, manage the labs in autonomy and reliably with respect also to safety and procedures, enjoy cooperation in interdisciplinary teams, and have an accurate, results-oriented working style.

Benefits

• Position on the level of a research associate, initially limited to 2 years
• Freedom and development opportunities (for example in the direction of research, project management or an expert role for Physical AI and robotics projects)
• High degree of flexibility with respect to working times and places (up to 50% homeoffice in principle, while working with hardware will require a higher on-site percentage depending on projects and laboratory needs).