AI Engineer (World Models)
Foundation
- Location
- Onsite (San Francisco, California)
- Employment
- Full-time
- Level
- Senior Level
Posted 1 day ago
About the Role
Foundation is building a general-purpose humanoid robot to address labor shortages and operate in complex environments. This role involves architecting the core intelligence layer, specifically world models, to enable the robot to plan, predict, and adapt in real-world settings.
Skills
World Models
Reinforcement Learning
PyTorch
JAX
Deep Learning
Transformers
Diffusion Models
Neural Radiance Fields
Python
C++
Robotics
ROS2
Isaac Sim
MuJoCo
Video Prediction
Future-frame Generation
Full job details
Why are We Hiring for this Role:
- We are building a general-purpose humanoid that must understand and navigate the physical world — and that requires a dedicated engineer to architect the internal models that make that possible
- World models are the cognitive backbone of our robot; without them, the humanoid cannot plan, predict, or adapt to novel environments
- We are at an inflection point where our hardware is ready — now we need the intelligence layer to match it
- The gap between a robot that executes fixed commands and one that truly reasons about its environment is a world model; we are hiring to close that gap
- As we scale to real-world deployment, our humanoid needs to generalize across unstructured, unpredictable settings — something only a robust world model can enable
- This hire will directly shape the core intelligence architecture of our platform before it becomes locked in at scale
What Kind of person are we looking for
- Hands-on experience building world models, model-based RL, or predictive world simulators using frameworks like PyTorch or JAX — you have shipped these systems, not just studied them
- Strong foundation in deep learning architectures relevant to world modeling: transformers, diffusion models, neural radiance fields (NeRF), and variational recurrent state-space models
- Proficient in Python as a primary research and development language, with production-level familiarity in C++ for latency-sensitive inference and real-time robotics integration
- Experience with robotics middleware and simulation environments — ROS2, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo — and the ability to close the sim-to-real gap in learned representations
- Experience with video prediction or future-frame generation models (e.g., RSSM, DreamerV3, UniSim, Genie) is a strong plus
- Able to read and implement from recent arXiv papers with minimal overhead — you are comfortable turning a research prototype into a tested, integrated syste