Staff Roboticist- Stretch Manipulation

Stretch, Boston Dynamics’ mobile manipulation robot for warehouse applications, has moved nearly 50 million boxes for customers around the world. On the Stretch Manipulation team, your innovations ship directly to that fleet, driving customer value each and every day.

You’ll do hands-on development of Stretch’s manipulation stack – leveraging the best of algorithmic and data-driven techniques. You’ll develop within a vertically integrated system, providing the opportunity to tightly couple your software with our world-class hardware, with access to fleet metrics and fleet-scale data to guide innovation. 

To thrive in this role:

• You’re excited to advance Stretch’s manipulation capabilities (grasping, motion generation, next box selection), delivering increased performance to customers who depend on Stretch daily.
• You track the latest advancements in robotics and physical AI with a critical eye, rigorously evaluating them for real-world performance benefits before deploying them as shippable features for our robot fleet.
• You know when to act scrappy to validate design concepts quickly, and when to build carefully to ensure a scalable, production-ready system.
• You rapidly iterate from concepts to on-robot tests to hardened features, following through to ensure new capabilities are polished before reaching the customer.
• You’re eager to engage with customer-facing teams (Product, Customer Success) and care deeply about solving real-world warehouse challenges.

We’re looking for (you don’t need to check every box):

• Deep expertise in classical manipulation (planning, control, grasping) or robot learning (imitation learning, RL, VLAs), with working fluency in the other.
• Bachelor's or Master's with 2+ years of experience, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field.
• Experience developing and evaluating classical and learned robot capabilities in simulation and via on-robot experiments; strong physical intuition, and confidence, comfort, and excitement when working with real robots.
• Excellent programming skills in C++ and Python within a Linux environment; strong debugging skills; familiarity with modern agentic programming workflows (e.g., Claude Code).
• Experience deploying robotic manipulation capabilities to production, especially in logistics or warehouse settings.

Nice to have:

• Publications in top-tier robotics/AI conferences and journals (e.g., RSS, ICRA, IROS, RA-L, T-RO, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL).
• Strong record in robotics competitions.

We are interested in every qualified candidate who is eligible to work in the United States. However, we are not able to sponsor visas for this position.

The base pay range for this position is between $135,000 to $160,000 annually. Base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors including, but not limited to internal equity, job related knowledge, skills and experience. This range represents a good faith estimate of compensation at the time of posting. Boston Dynamics offers a generous Benefits package including medical, dental vision, 401(k), paid time off and a annual bonus structure. Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer for employment.