Microsoft Research is seeking exceptional researchers passionate about making robots a helpful and safe part of everyday reality. As a member of our team and its collaborations, you will do ground-breaking research at the junction of decision-making (imitation learning, RL, planning) and large multimodal models to enable robots to act and learn robustly in weakly structured environments. 

Responsibilities

• Conduct research in multimodal model training and inference as well as data-efficient learning for decision making to advance state of the art in mobile robotic manipulation. 

• Build proofs of concept that demonstrate the effectiveness of your approaches on physical robot hardware. 

• Actively contribute to team projects as well as collaborations with Microsoft-internal and external partners. 

• Engage in open research activities, including publishing your research findings.  

Qualifications

Required qualifications: 

• PhD in AI/ML, physics, statistics, mechanical engineering, or closely related areas. 

• Well-established track record of research publications, open-source software releases, and other scientific activities. 

• Demonstrated expertise with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and strong Python programming skills. 

Other Requirements: 

As a part of you application, please submit the following materials as attachments:

• Your CV. 

• Two conference, journal, or arXiv articles, book chapters, or equivalent writing samples that best demonstrate your expertise. 

• (Optional) The names of two references. 

Preferred qualifications: 

• Experience with at least one project with a publicly available codebase where the candidate has contributed to LLM/VLM/VLA pre- or post-training. 

• At least one top-tier-venue publication with empirical evaluation done by the candidate on physical robot hardware. 

• Experience with at least one project with a publicly available codebase where the candidate has contributed to implementing an imitation learning, RL, or planning approach. 

• Experience with MuJoCo or a PhysX-based simulation toolkit such as Isaac Sim. 

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate, communicate effectively, and work as part of a team. 

Research Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $117,200 - $229,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $153,600 - $250,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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