Senior AI Researcher

The future of defense will be decided by those who field intelligent machines at scale. At Scout AI, we’re developing Fury, the first robotic foundation model for defense, to give U.S. forces overwhelming, adaptable, and autonomous power across every domain. Fury enables human operators to command fleets of robots through natural language, and empowers those machines to sense, decide, and act together as one. This mission will ask everything of us: urgency, precision, and relentless work.

The Role We’re hiring a Staff or Senior AI Researcher on the Fury Team to help push the frontiers of embodied intelligence for autonomous defense systems. You will lead research in core areas including reinforcement learning, vision-language-action modeling, sim-to-real transfer, dynamic AI memory, and multi-agent coordination. Your work will be foundational to the development, training, and deployment of Fury.

This role sits at the intersection of cutting-edge ML research, real-world robotics, and defense. You'll translate foundational research into scalable, robust models that operate in unstructured, contested environments, from concept to deployment. We’re a startup. You’ll be moving fast, context-switching daily, and helping define the culture and process as we go. This is a rare opportunity to come in early and architect the future of defense.

Responsibilities

• Conduct original research in embodied AI, including learning from warfighter demonstration, reinforcement learning, memory, reward, vision-language modeling, and world modeling

• Build, test, and benchmark large-scale models for perception, decision-making, and control in simulated and physical environments

• Investigate transfer learning and continual learning paradigms across diverse robotic domains

• Collaborate with engineering, robotics, and field teams to integrate research into operational systems

• Lead research strategy and roadmap across key areas of autonomy and machine learning

• Support field tests and data collection campaigns to evaluate system performance in realistic environments

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, or a related field plus 4+ years of applied research experience (industry, postdoc, or lab), or 8+ years of equivalent industry research experience without a PhD

• Strong publication record in top-tier venues

• Deep expertise in one or more of the following: reinforcement learning, imitation learning, vision-language models, sim-to-real, world modeling, or agentic AI

• Hands-on experience building and evaluating models for embodied agents or autonomous systems

• Proficiency in Python and frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX

• Experience working with large-scale datasets and high-dimensional sensor inputs

• Demonstrated ability to take ideas from research concept to deployed prototype

• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities

• Passion about defense of the United States and its allies

• May be expected to obtain and hold a U.S. Top Secret security clearance

Why Join Scout

• Work on the world’s most important frontier, ensuring U.S. and allied dominance in the age of intelligent machines

• Be a core part of a team building the first defense-specific robotic foundation model

• Collaborate with some of the top engineers in autonomy, AI, and national security

• See your work deployed on real systems

• Help define the future of intelligent defense systems

• Backed by Draper Associates, Booz Allen Ventures, and other top investors

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package including base salary and bonus

• Meaningful equity

• Premium medical, dental, and vision plans with $0 paycheck contribution

• Competitive PTO and company holiday calendar

• Catered lunch daily and fully stocked kitchen

• EV charging

• Relocation assistance (depending on role eligibility)

The stated salary range below represents an estimated base pay only and reflects consideration of multiple compensation factors. Final salary offers may differ depending on factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience or training background, specialized skills, and business needs. Most full-time positions also include highly competitive equity awards, which form part of Scout AI's overall compensation package. In addition, Scout AI provides comprehensive, top-tier benefits to full-time employees.

US Salary Range $200,000—$400,000 USD