Darwin logo

Member of Technical Staff, Robot Learning

Darwin

San Francisco, CAFull-time$120–170K/yrSeen 2 days agoStill listed 2 days ago

Most applications go out cold — see where you stand first. No sign-up to start.

Watch jobs like this.

Don't just apply. Show up ready.

Olive works from this exact posting.

At a glance

Compensation
$120–170K/yr
Location
San Francisco, CA
Schedule
Full-time
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Job overview

Darwin is building general-purpose robot technicians to assemble and maintain machines, beginning with data centers. The Member of Technical Staff, Robot Learning will develop robot-learning models and policies for physical tasks, including dexterous manipulation and tool use. The role spans learning architectures, data collection and training, experimentation, and deployment on physical robots. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States; the company does not currently sponsor work visas.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

PythonTorch/PyTorchMachine LearningDeep LearningReinforcement Learning (RL)Computer VisionGenerative AIModel TrainingLearning AlgorithmsExperimental DesignRobot LearningDexterous ManipulationRobot PerceptionRobot ReasoningRobot ControlData CollectionTraining PipelinesPolicy EvaluationRobot DeploymentCritical ThinkingCross-Disciplinary CollaborationOwnership

Qualifications

United States Work Authorization

Full job description

The Mission Every machine is built and repaired by skilled hands. The world needs more of them. At Darwin, we're building general-purpose robot technicians that assemble and maintain the machines civilization runs on. We're starting with data centers, where assembly, commissioning, and maintenance require dexterity, precision, and tool use. Our robots learn these tasks from demonstrations rather than being explicitly programmed for each workflow. We're a small team building the intelligence, hardware, and company to bring these robots into the real world. What You'll Work On

  • Robot Learning: Research, design, and train models and policies for learning complex physical tasks from demonstrations and experience.
  • Dexterous Manipulation: Develop learning approaches for precise manipulation, assembly, and tool use.
  • Learning Architectures: Design novel architectures and algorithms for robot perception, reasoning, and control.
  • Data & Training: Design data collection strategies, training pipelines, and methods for learning from real-world experience.
  • Evaluation & Deployment: Design experiments, evaluate performance, and improve policies on physical robots.

Who You Are You're an exceptional machine learning researcher or engineer who wants to build autonomous robots that operate in the physical world. You have strong foundations in deep learning and experience designing and training models. You think critically about architectures, learning algorithms, data, and experimental design. You have deep expertise in at least one area of machine learning, with the curiosity to work across disciplines. You're comfortable developing new approaches, testing ideas, and challenging existing methods. You have high agency, move quickly, and take ownership from research and data collection through training and deployment. Work Eligibility Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. We do not currently sponsor work visas.

How this job compares

Set against the 6,068 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 2, 2026.

Pay
  • This posting$120–170K/yr
  • California median$176–261K/yr1,359 salary ranges
  • US median$150–245K/yr4,824 salary ranges

This range's midpoint, $145K, is 35% below the California median midpoint ($222K) — in the lowest quarter of Machine Learning Engineer salary ranges in California.

Openings
Olive Jobs lists 1,837 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs in California and 6,068 across the US. 8% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for no prior experience — less than three in four Machine Learning Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 5 years, across 4,863 postings).
Education
2,299 of the 6,068 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs (38%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 2, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

You've read the whole posting — now see how you match it.