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Staff Research Engineer, Expressive Motion and Believability, DeepMind

DeepMind

CAJob$207–300K/yrPosted 5 days agoStill listed today

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At a glance

Compensation
$207–300K/yr
Location
CA
Work Authorization
Not specified

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

Job overview

As a Research Engineer on the Companion Robots team, the hire will train expressive, emotionally legible robot motion and develop metrics to evaluate its effectiveness. The role works with animators and character designers to turn reference motion into trainable behavior, builds evaluation tools to compare behaviors, models, and robot platforms, and collaborates on systems that generate real-time expressive responses to stimuli and internal motivations.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Software Development, nice to haveSoftware Testing, nice to haveSoftware Design, nice to haveReinforcement Learning, nice to haveMimicry, nice to haveData Structures, nice to haveAlgorithms, nice to haveTechnical Management, nice to haveSoftware Product Launch, requiredSoftware Architecture, requiredImitation Learning, requiredMultimodal Generative Modeling, requiredTraining and Inference, requiredLarge Vision Models, requiredVision-Language Models, requiredVideo Models, requiredMultimodal Models, requiredGenerative Architectures, requiredWorld Models, requiredTechnical Leadership, nice to haveProject Team Leadership, nice to haveTechnical Direction, nice to haveCross-Functional Collaboration, nice to haveCross-Business Collaboration, nice to have

Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent Practical Experience, required8 Years Software Development Experience, required5 Years Software Testing and Launch Experience, required3 Years Software Design and Architecture Experience, required2 Years Relevant Modeling Experience, required1 Year Generative Architecture or World Model Experience, requiredMaster's or PhD in Related Field, nice to have8 Years Data Structures and Algorithms Experience, nice to have3 Years Technical Leadership Experience, nice to have3 Years Complex Organization Experience, nice to haveEnglish Proficiency, required

Full job description

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corporate_fareDeepMindplaceSan Francisco, CA, USA; Mountain View, CA, USA

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info_outline XApplicants in San Francisco: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: San Francisco, CA, USA; Mountain View, CA, USA.

Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8 years of experience in software development.
  • 5 years of experience testing, and launching software products.
  • 3 years of experience with software design and architecture.
  • 2 years of experience in reinforcement learning, imitation learning, multimodal generative modeling, training and inference, and large vision, vision-language, video, and other multimodal models.
  • 1 year of experience building generative architectures or world models applied to video, robotics, or interactive simulation environments.

Preferred qualifications:

  • Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
  • 8 years of experience with data structures and algorithms.
  • 3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.
  • 3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects.

About the job As a Research Engineer on the Companion Robots team, you will train expressive, emotionally legible motion—including gait, gaze, posture, and gesture that change visibly with the robot's internal state—and develop the metrics to evaluate its effectiveness. You will work directly with animators and character designers, utilizing their expertise as a tuning pass and training signal, while building the evaluation harness required to compare behaviors, models, and robot platforms. Furthermore, you will collaborate with our state-of-the-art video generation and interaction models, such as Omni or Code Genie, to create systems capable of generating real-time expressive behavior in response to stimuli and internal motivations. Artificial intelligence will be one of humanity’s most transformative inventions. At Google DeepMind, we are a pioneering AI lab with exceptional interdisciplinary teams focused on advancing AI development to solve complex global challenges and accelerate high-quality product innovation for billions of users. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, ensuring safety and ethics are always our highest priority. We are pushing the boundaries across multiple domains. Our global teams offer diverse learning opportunities and varied career pathways for those driven to achieve exceptional results through collective effort. Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google. Responsibilities

  • Work with omni/omni-live to extract animation, fine tune models to generate real time behavior and expression in response to stimulus and internal motivation of the character.
  • Design, train and evaluate reinforcement learning and imitation learning algorithms for lifelike movement, gaze and posture, conditioned on the robot's affective and motivational state.
  • Work with animators to convert a library of hand-authored reference motion into style-conditioned policies, using adversarial motion priors and related techniques, so that character can be authored rather than hand-tuned.
  • Create scenario suites, batch simulation, video capture, and automated critics that assess behavior reads correct to an observer.
  • Run paired human comparisons with designers and human-factors partners, and report how well automated critics correlate with human judgment.

Information collected and processed as part of your Google Careers profile, and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Google's Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy. Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of the users we serve, creating a culture of belonging, and providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), expecting or parents-to-be, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other basis protected by law. See also Google's EEO Policy, Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal, Belonging at Google, and How we hire. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form. Google is a global company and, in order to facilitate efficient collaboration and communication globally, English proficiency is a requirement for all roles unless stated otherwise in the job posting. To all recruitment agencies: Google does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Google employees, or any other organization location. Google is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes. Equity is granted exclusively and discretionarily by Alphabet Inc. on the basis of an agreement concluded between you and Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is your sole contractual partner with respect to equity grants. GSU grants are not guaranteed, are discretionary, are subject to approval by the Alphabet Inc. board of directors or its delegate, the terms of the relevant Alphabet Inc. stock plan, and your grant agreement. They have no impact on statutory payments. Current or past grants do not confer an acquired right.

How this job compares

Set against the 1,143 open Research Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 12, 2026.

Pay
  • This posting$207–300K/yr
  • California median$184–300K/yr373 salary ranges
  • US median$139–250K/yr891 salary ranges

This range's midpoint, $254K, is close to the California median midpoint ($250K) — in the middle half of Research Engineer salary ranges in California.

Openings
Olive Jobs lists 502 open Research Engineer jobs in California and 1,143 across the US. 5% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for at least 8 years of experience — more than three in four Research Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 3 years, across 703 postings).
Education
332 of the 1,143 open Research Engineer jobs (29%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 12, 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.

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