# Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Robotics and Physical AI - Company: [Clera]() - Location: San Francisco - Team: Engineering - Employment type: Full Time - Salary: $100K – $300K - Posted: September 10, 2026 ## Job description ### About the Role This is a hands-on research and engineering role at a small, early-stage AI training data company focused on physical AI and robotics. You will work across the full stack, from learning algorithms and simulation to real-world robot deployment, helping push the frontier of how robots perceive, plan, and act in the physical world. ### What You'll Do * Develop learning systems for robots, including policies, world models, and vision-language-action models. * Build and maintain simulation environments and evaluation frameworks for robotic tasks. * Apply and advance computer vision and perception algorithms for autonomous robots. * Build pipelines connecting simulation and real-world robot deployment, covering real-to-sim and sim-to-real workflows. * Work directly with robot hardware, sensors, actuators, and embedded systems to prototype and validate capabilities. * Train and evaluate reinforcement-learning and imitation-learning systems for manipulation, locomotion, or mobile platforms. * Integrate and experiment with robot platforms to test algorithms in the physical world. * Create tools and infrastructure that accelerate robotics research and development. * Collaborate with external robotics companies and research labs on technical problems. ### What We're Looking For * Demonstrated research or engineering experience in robotics and AI, beyond academic experiments alone. New graduates with strong robotics backgrounds are welcome. * Strong software skills in both C++ and Python. * Practical experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, and computer vision. * Hands-on experience with real-to-sim or sim-to-real robotics workflows. * Familiarity with simulation platforms such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, MJX, or Genesis. * Experience working with robotics hardware, sensors, embedded systems, and 3D modeling tools. * Comfort moving fluidly across research, engineering, experimentation, and product development with end-to-end ownership. * Exposure to modern multimodal AI approaches, such as transformers, diffusion models, world models, vision-language-action models, LLMs, or AI agents, is a plus. * An individual contributor mindset with motivation to ship in a small, collaborative team. ### Compensation & Benefits Salary range: **$100,000 to $300,000 USD annually**. Visa sponsorship is not available; candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. ### Location On-site in **San Francisco, California**. This role is not remote. ## Apply [Apply on Clera]() Canonical job page: