Physical AI R&D Scientist
Ernst and Young21 days ago
Base Salary
$117k - $198k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and develop intelligent robotic systems and reusable Physical AI assets using Vision-Language-Action models, Robot Foundation Models, and related technologies.
- Build, train, fine-tune, evaluate, and integrate AI models for robotic perception, reasoning, planning, manipulation, navigation, and human-machine interaction.
- Design workflows for synthetic-data generation, teleoperation, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, policy evaluation, and sim-to-real transfer.
- Evaluate robotics foundation models, simulation technologies, and development frameworks for inclusion in EY’s Physical AI portfolio.
- Develop simulation and digital-twin environments and coordinate the setup, testing, readiness, customization, and rollout of technical showcases.
- Collaborate with R&D teams, technical partners, client account teams, alliance partners, and EY leadership to share reusable code, datasets, models, and assets.
- Serve as a technical lead for client workshops, executive briefings, innovation sessions, demonstrations, and technical showcases.
- Translate client challenges and business priorities into technical requirements, research questions, experiments, prototypes, and development roadmaps.
- Contribute to technical points of view, research papers, invention disclosures, reference architectures, internal learning materials, and external technical presentations.
- Mentor technical team members and promote strong engineering practices, reproducibility, responsible AI, and safe robotics development.
- Support prioritization of the Palo Alto R&D roadmap based on global strategy, client demand, industry relevance, and commercialization priorities.
Requirements
- Strong hands-on experience in robotics, embodied AI, machine learning, computer vision, or autonomous-systems R&D.
- Demonstrated experience developing robotics applications using VLA models, world foundation models, or other AI models.
- Advanced Python proficiency and working proficiency in C++ or another language commonly used in robotics systems.
- Experience designing, training, fine-tuning, and evaluating machine-learning models using PyTorch or equivalent technologies.
- Deep experience with robotics development frameworks, preferably ROS or ROS 2, and with integrating sensors, actuators, cameras, and robotic platforms.
- Strong understanding of robotic perception, manipulation, navigation, motion planning, control, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and sim-to-real transfer.
- Strong understanding of safety, security, responsible AI, and risk considerations for AI-enabled physical systems.
- Ability to convert business and industry challenges into technical problems, research questions, experiments, and prototype architectures.
- Strong communication, stakeholder-management, organizational, and execution skills for high-visibility technical and client engagements.
- Preferred qualifications include a PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related discipline.
- Preferred experience includes humanoid or general-purpose robotics, VLA-based robotic systems, multimodal foundation-model applications, synthetic data, domain randomization, edge computing, inference optimization, cloud ML platforms, MLOps, robotics data pipelines, distributed training, and agentic AI.
- Experience collaborating with clients or industry teams on technical showcases and an established Bay Area robotics ecosystem network are beneficial.
Benefits
- Base salary for Bay Area California offices is $116,700 to $198,300.
- Medical and dental coverage, pension, and 401(k) plans are included.
- Benefits include paid time off, flexible vacation, EY paid holidays, winter and summer breaks, personal and family care leave, and other leaves of absence.
- The position is based in EY.ai Labs in Palo Alto, California, with collaboration across teams in Alpharetta, Georgia, and other locations.
- EY accepts applications on an ongoing basis and asks applicants to limit themselves to two applications within a six-month period.
About Ernst and Young
Ernst & Young (EY) provides audit/assurance, tax, consulting, strategy and transactions services to enterprises, financial institutions, and public‑sector clients. Structured as a global network of partner‑owned member firms, it sells professional services on a fee basis, including a dedicated Financial Services Organization for banking, insurance, and capital markets. Headquartered in London, EY was formed in 1989 from the merger of Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young, and operates in 150+ countries.