Boston Dynamics · 3 hours ago
Research Scientist, VLA Models - Atlas
Waltham, MA
Full-time
Onsite
Mid, Senior Level
3+ years expBoston Dynamics is a robotics company known for its advanced humanoid robots. They are seeking a VLA Research Scientist to architect, train, and deploy large-scale behavior models for dexterous manipulation on their Atlas robot, focusing on multimodal input and collaboration with various teams.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)RoboticsSoftware
Responsibilities
Architect and train end-to-end VLA and Large Behavior Models for mobile manipulation on Atlas
Build large-scale imitation learning pipelines that learn from human demonstrations, teleoperation, and simulation data
Develop policies capable of few-shot generalization across diverse manipulation tasks
Create hierarchical behavior systems that combine learned skills into long-horizon behaviors
Integrate your models into Atlas’s autonomy stack in collaboration with controls and platform teams
Deploy, debug, and iterate your models directly on physical hardware
Write high-quality, maintainable Python and C++ code that fits into a large production codebase
Qualification
Required
MS with 3+ years of experience or PhD in Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Science, or related fields
Prior experience training and deploying learned policies for complex behaviors in robots or simulated characters
Strong background in: Behavior cloning / imitation learning, Diffusion policies, ACT, or other modern BC architectures, Large behavior models or sequence modeling, Multimodal (vision/language/action) learning
Experience with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX) and large-scale training workflows
Strong analytical and debugging skills; ability to write reliable, well-structured research code
Preferred
Hands-on experience deploying learned policies on real robots
Experience creating or curating large demonstration datasets (teleop, human demos, ego-centric video)
Experience with RL as a complementary tool within behavior learning pipelines
Publications in top-tier ML or robotics conferences (e.g., CoRL, RSS, ICRA, NeurIPS)
Experience contributing to large C++ or Python codebases
Company
Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that specializes in building dynamic robots and software for human simulation.
501-1000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Boston Dynamics has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
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Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (16)
2024 (25)
2023 (7)
2022 (6)
2020 (3)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$37MKey Investors
SoftBank
2020-12-09Acquired
2019-02-06Series Unknown· $37M
Leadership Team
Robert Playter
Chief Executive Officer
Marc Theermann
Chief Strategy Officer
Recent News
eeNews Europe
2025-12-29
2025-12-22
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