Research Scientist, Robot Foundation Models

🧠 Your day-to-day

• Research in architectures and data around robot foundation models.

• Implement and experiment with different models such as VLAs, WAMs, omni models, and video models.

• Implement and experiment with different learning approaches of the RL/BC kind.

• Synthesize and filter large video datasets.

• Build scalable distributed training pipelines and infrastructure.

• Influence and/or own robot policy development and data decisions.

🧩 What you’ll be working on

• Lead research into architectures, data and learning approaches for robot foundation models.

• Design, implement and evaluate models such as VLAs, WAMs, omni-modal models, video models and related foundation-model architectures for robotics.

• Explore and develop learning approaches including reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning and other methods relevant to robot policy development.

• Synthesize, curate and filter large-scale video datasets for model training and evaluation.

• Build and use scalable distributed training pipelines and infrastructure for large models and large datasets.

• Influence and/or own technical decisions around robot policy development, data strategy and model design.

• Collaborate closely with scientists, engineers and robotics teams to connect research progress to real-world robot performance.

• Communicate research clearly internally and, where appropriate, contribute to external publications and Wayve’s scientific presence.

🙌 You should apply if

• Deep experience in machine learning, with a focus on one or more of: vision-language models, video models, robot policies, or foundation models for robotics or embodied AI.

• Experience with scalable training, such as multi-node training, large datasets and/or large model training.

• Strong research track record, including publications in top-tier venues such as ICRA, CoRL, CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML or ICLR.

• Strong coding skills and hands-on experience with modern machine learning frameworks.

• Ability to design and drive an independent research agenda while collaborating closely with engineering and robotics teams.

• Experience translating research ideas into working systems, experiments or deployed capabilities.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction across teams.

🌱 Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.