Staff Applied Scientist – AI & Robotics

General Motors

Staff Applied Scientist developing robot learning models for GM's AI Research team. Leading the design and deployment of advanced robot learning architectures to solve industrial challenges.

Posted 4/30/2026full-timeMountain View • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $198,000 - $260,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PyTorch

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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.

Requirements

What you’ll need

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.

Benefits

Comp & perks

GM offers a variety of health and wellbeing benefit programs.
Benefit options include 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 and more.
Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

robot learning architecturespolicy training pipelinespolicy inferenceclosed-loop controllarge-scale architecturesmachine learning modelsAI architecturesPyTorchROSrobot manipulation

Soft Skills

collaborationleadershipmentorshipcommunication

Certifications

PhD in STEMMaster’s in robotics or embodied AI