General Motors · 3 days ago
Staff Applied Scientist - AI & Robotics
Mountain View, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$198K/yr - $260K/yrGeneral Motors is a company focused on advancing technology for a better future. As a Staff Applied Scientist, you will lead the development of core components of embodied AI systems, collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure the robustness and effectiveness of robotic agents in real-world applications.
AutomotiveElectric VehicleInformation ServicesManufacturingTransportation
Responsibilities
Design and implement advanced robot learning architectures (e.g., diffusion policies, ACT, VLM/VLA-guided agents, imitation learning) to support dexterous manipulation, path planning, and autonomous task sequencing
Develop end-to-end policy training pipelines, integrating multi-modal sensory data (RGB, depth, proprioception, force/torque, LiDAR, tactile inputs) with control outputs
Build policy inference and closed-loop control that connect perception, planning, and execution on physical robotic platforms
Apply and extend large-scale architectures—LLMs, VLM/VLAs, diffusion models—to embodied tasks, grounding, and sim-to-real adaptation
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy robot policies on hardware, ensuring robustness, repeatability, and safety
Lead data strategy for demonstrations, teleoperation, simulation pipelines, and evaluation frameworks for manipulation policies
Stay current with embodied AI research and share insights internally through discussion, mentorship, and technical presentations
Qualification
Required
PhD in a relevant STEM field, or Master's with equivalent industry experience in robotics, robot learning, or embodied AI
Proven experience building and deploying machine learning models on robotic systems—including training, evaluation, and real-world execution or simulation
Deep understanding of modern AI architectures (e.g., Transformers, diffusion models, VLM/VLAs, CNNs) with strong experience training models at scale
Strong PyTorch implementation skills, including authoring custom modules, batching, debugging, and performance optimization
Practical experience with ROS/ROS2 and integrating learned policies into manipulation or motion control workflows
Demonstrated impact via robot learning publications, open-source contributions, or production robotics deployments
Preferred
Experience developing robot learning systems for dexterous manipulation, multi-step task execution, or autonomous behaviors
Expertise in robotics perception, including 3D understanding, force sensing, tactile feedback, multimodal fusion, or affordance modeling
Familiarity with Isaac Sim, Mujoco, Gazebo, PyBullet, or custom simulators, and demonstrated ability to transfer policies to hardware
Experience adapting foundation models (VLM/VLAs, diffusion, instruction-following agents) for embodied control tasks
Track record of production-ready robotics systems, reproducible research artifacts, or deployments in physical environments
Benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
Health Savings Account
Flexible Spending Accounts
Retirement savings plan
Sickness and accident benefits
Life insurance
Paid vacation & holidays
Tuition assistance programs
Employee assistance program
GM vehicle discounts
Company
General Motors
General Motors is an automotive company that designs, produces, markets, and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts.
Founded in 1908
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
General Motors has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (787)
2024 (740)
2023 (450)
2022 (795)
2021 (748)
2020 (452)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$8.51BKey Investors
US Department of Energy
2025-05-05Post Ipo Debt· $2B
2024-10-31Grant· $8M
2024-07-11Grant· $500M
Leadership Team
Mary Barra
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Tony Cervone
Senior Vice President, Global Communications
Recent News
2026-01-12
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2026-01-12
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