Technical Lead Manager, Physical AI

Scale AI is the data engine for the entire AI industry. Our mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications by providing organizations with the high-quality data they need. The Physical AI team at Scale is focused on the next frontier: building general AI that can reason and act in the physical world. By leveraging Scale’s massive data infrastructure, we are helping frontier labs build Foundation Models for Physical AI that will redefine the future of automation.

As the Technical Lead Manager (TLM) for the Physical AI team of Scale, you will bridge the gap between cutting‑edge Machine Learning research and physical robot deployment. You will lead a high‑performing team of Research Engineers while remaining a hands‑on technical contributor (~60% of your time).

Your primary focus will be the development and evaluation of Large‑Scale Foundation Models (e.g. VLAs, World models) that allow robots and AVs to generalize across diverse tasks, environments, and morphologies.

• Model Scaling: Direct research into scaling laws for Physical AI, determining how to best utilize massive datasets for pre‑training and fine‑tuning generalist policies.
• VLA and World model development: Develop novel methods for developing and evaluating models, including new Physical AI industry benchmarks.
• Hands‑on Modeling: Actively write code to implement, train and test state‑of‑the‑art architectures. Conduct research on Physical AI data collection, cross‑embodiment training, and policy fine‑tuning.
• Data Strategy: Collaborate with internal labeling teams to design robotic‑native data pipelines, including the use of VLMs for automated trajectory annotation and data synthesis.
• Collaborate closely with customers: Drive the industry forward in using Scale data.

• Mentorship: Lead and grow a team of 4‑6 elite Physical AI researchers, fostering a culture of high‑velocity experimentation and rigorous evaluation.
• Paper‑to‑Product: Translate the latest research from NeurIPS, ICRA, and CVPR into production‑ready features for Scale’s Physical AI partners.
• Cross‑functional Alignment: Work with cross‑functional teams (Product and Operations) to bring our research breakthroughs into production.

• Deep Learning Mastery: Expert‑level proficiency in PyTorch, with deep knowledge of Transformer architectures, Attention mechanisms, and Self‑Supervised Learning.
• VLM/VLA
  
  Experience:
  
  Proven track record of working with Vision‑Language Models (e.g. CLIP, PaLM‑E) and adapting them for spatial reasoning or embodied tasks.
• Generative AI: Experience with Diffusion Models for sequence generation or Generative World Models for predictive modeling.

• Embodied AI: Strong understanding of Physical AI stack, including imitation learning, reinforcement learning (RL), and multi‑modal sensor fusion.
• Infrastructure: Experience with large‑scale distributed training across GPU clusters and high‑performance data loading.
• Leadership: 1+ years of experience leading technical teams or projects in a research‑intensive environment.

• Publication Record: First‑author publications at top‑tier AI/ML conferences (NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, CoRL).
• Hardware Generalization: Experience building models that work across different robot types (arms, mobile bases, humanoids).
• Sim‑to‑Real: Experience with high‑fidelity simulators (e.g. Isaac Gym, Mu Jo Co ) and the nuances of physical domain adaptation.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity‑based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. You’ll also receive benefits including comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, generous PTO, and potentially additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

The base salary range for this full‑time position in the location of San Francisco is: $248,800 - $311,000 USD.

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