Research Scientist, Generalist Embodied Agent Research - Phd New College Grad 2026

NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Santa Clara, CA +1 · Remote

Research Scientist role focused on building humanoid robot foundation models and general-purpose embodied agents. Involves designing and implementing novel AI algorithms, developing large-scale training and inference methods, and deploying models in simulation and on hardware. Requires strong experience in LLMs, multimodal foundation models, reinforcement learning, agent learning, and applied robotics, with a PhD and publication record.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design and implement novel AI algorithms and models for general-purpose humanoid robots and embodied agents;
  2. Develop large-scale AI training and inference methods for foundation models;
  3. Optimize and deploy AI models in physical simulation and on robot hardware;
  4. Collaborate with research and engineering teams across all of NVIDIA to transfer research to products and services.

Skills

Required

  • PyTorch, Jax, Tensorflow, etc.
  • Python or C++
  • LLMs
  • multimodal foundation models
  • large generative models
  • foundation and diffusion models
  • agent learning
  • applied robotics
  • robot learning
  • reinforcement learning
  • imitation learning
  • classical control methods
  • robot kinematics
  • robot dynamics
  • robot sensors
  • physics simulation frameworks such as MuJoCo and Isaac Sim

Nice to have

  • CUDA
  • ROS
  • PID
  • model predictive control
  • whole-body control
  • robot hardware design
  • hands-on building experience

What the JD emphasized

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science/Engineering, Electrical Engineering, etc., or equivalent research experience
  • Hands-on training experience and publications in at least one of the following topics: LLMs; Large vision-language models; Video generative models and diffusion algorithms; Action-based transformers
  • Hands-on training experience and publications in robot learning, such as reinforcement learning, imitation learning, classical control methods, etc.

Other signals

  • humanoid robot foundation models
  • general-purpose embodied agents
  • multimodal foundation models
  • large-scale robot learning
  • physical simulation
  • Project GR00T