Senior Applied Scientist, Safe Locomotion, Compass

Description

We are seeking an Applied Scientist to join Amazon Robotics, Compass Team. In this role, you will own the development of safe legged locomotion algorithms and their deployment on physical hardware, developing learning-based controllers that enable quadrupeds and humanoids to walk, run, and recover from disturbances with agility and robustness. You will leverage Reinforcement Learning (RL), sim-to-real transfer, and other learning-based architectures to train policies that produce stable, dynamic gaits across varied terrains and operating conditions. These learned policies will interface with model-based control strategies to form whole-body control laws that balance performance and safety. Your work sits at the novel intersection of safety and machine learning, where these learned policies will be used in a safety-critical context for complex safety constraints like stability. You will collaborate closely with perception, planning, and safety teams to close the loop between what the robot sees, where it needs to go, and how it moves to get there safely. This is a rare opportunity to shape how legged robots move through the world alongside people.

Key job responsibilities

• Design, train, and deploy reinforcement learning policies for dynamic legged locomotion including walking, running, stair climbing, and fall recovery on physical quadruped and humanoid platforms

• Collaborate with the Compass safety team to ensure locomotion policies operate within safety-critical bounds, incorporating control barrier functions or other formal safety mechanisms as constraints during or after training

• Develop sim-to-real transfer pipelines that produce policies robust to the reality gap, including domain randomization, system identification, and adaptive strategies

• Integrate learned locomotion policies with model-based whole-body controllers, defining how RL outputs (e.g., joint targets, contact schedules) interface with optimization-based control layers

• Formulate reward functions and training curricula that encode both performance objectives and safety constraints, ensuring policies respect stability and contact-force limits

• Develop and maintain large-scale training infrastructure for locomotion policy learning, including physics simulation environments and parallelized training pipelines

• Evaluate policy performance rigorously through simulation benchmarks, hardware experiments, and failure-mode analysis

• Investigate emerging techniques (e.g., foundation models for control, diffusion policies, world models) and assess their applicability to safe legged locomotion

• Publish research at top-tier robotics and ML venues and contribute to Amazon's scientific reputation in legged robotics

• Collaborate with perception and planning teams to enable terrain-aware and goal-conditioned locomotion behaviors

A day in the life

Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include:

1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage

2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options

3. Paid Time Off (PTO)

4. 401(k) Plan

If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply!

About the team

Work with the inventors of control barrier functions on a novel, universal approach to safe autonomy: one that scales across mobile robots, manipulators, mobile manipulators, and future robot platforms with dynamic stability. You'll push the boundary of safe performance by integrating safety with motion planning, RL, and foundation models, ensuring that safety is never a blocker to robot performance. Your work will underpin robots operating alongside people at Amazon's unprecendented scale.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience

• 3+ years of experience applying RL to physical robotic systems (beyond simulation-only work)

• Demonstrated expertise in sim-to-real transfer for locomotion or manipulation tasks

• Strong understanding of legged robot dynamics, contact mechanics, and whole-body control fundamentals

• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX) with experience building custom RL training pipelines

• Experience with physics simulators for robotics (e.g., Isaac Gym/Sim, MuJoCo, PyBullet)

• Track record of publications at top-tier venues (e.g., RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, ICLR, IROS)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience deploying RL-trained locomotion policies on physical quadrupeds or humanoids

• Familiarity with safety-constrained RL

• Experience with model-based control (MPC, whole-body QP controllers, operational space control) and how learned policies compose with them

• Knowledge of stability theory (Lyapunov methods, orbital stability) as it applies to periodic gaits

• Experience with hierarchical RL, skill composition, or multi-task policy architectures for locomotion

• Familiarity with real-time deployment constraints (latency budgets, onboard compute limitations, control-loop frequencies)

• Experience building or contributing to large-scale RL training infrastructure (distributed training, GPU clusters)

• Strong communication skills and ability to work across disciplinary boundaries (ML, controls, mechanical engineering)

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits .

USA, CA, PASADENA - 167,100.00 - 226,100.00 USD annually