Robotics Research Engineer – Embodied Intelligence

Glidance, Inc. Robotics Research Engineer – Embodied Intelligence Seattle, WA
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We are looking for an exceptional Robotics Research Engineer to become one of the founding members of Glidance's Embodied Intelligence team. You will work directly with the Head of Embodied Intelligence to help invent, build, and deploy the next generation of perception, reasoning, planning, and learning systems that power autonomous way finding in the real world. This role sits at the intersection of robotics, AI agents, multimodal perception, vision-language models, spatial intelligence, human-in-the-loop learning, and real-world deployment.

The systems you build will leave the lab and operate on physical robots used daily by real people.

At Glidance, we are creating the future of personal robotics by harnessing cutting edge robotics and AI to address actual human need and transform lives. Our flagship product, Glide, is the world’s first Intelligent Guide for individuals who are blind or have low vision, representing a new category of personal robots to enable millions of people to get out of their homes and navigate more confidently, safely, and independently.

If you’re looking for a place where groundbreaking technology meets real‑world impact, and where your work defines a category rather than iterates upon it, then Glidance is where you belong. This is not just your next job: it is your chance to make a life‑changing impact on millions around the world.

We are building the future of embodied intelligence in open‑world human spaces. Our mission begins with helping blind and low‑vision individuals navigate the world with greater confidence, safety, and independence through Glide, our autonomous mobility and guidance system. But the challenge extends far beyond mobility. We believe human‑scale navigation and interaction represent one of the largest unsolved problems in AI and robotics.

Every Glide deployed becomes part of a growing learning system, generating the perception, interaction, and environmental data required to advance embodied intelligence in real‑world environments. Our systems must perceive, understand, reason, plan, learn, and adapt while operating alongside people in dynamic, unpredictable spaces.

• Develop multimodal perception systems that understand pedestrian environments.
• Build agentic systems capable of understanding user intent and environmental context.
• Explore memory, planning, reasoning, and long‑horizon task execution.
• Develop evaluation frameworks and metrics for embodied intelligence.
• Build data pipelines supporting closed‑loop learning and continuous improvement.
• Analyze real‑world deployment data and identify opportunities for model improvement.
• Prototype rapidly, validate ideas through experimentation, and deploy successful solutions.
• Work closely with robotics, firmware, software, cloud, and product teams.
• Deploy and iterate on models running on physical robotic systems.

Required

• MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, AI, or related field
• Strong software engineering skills in C++ and Python
• Experience with PyTorch or similar ML frameworks
• Experience building machine learning or robotics systems beyond coursework
• Strong problem‑solving ability and comfort working in ambiguous environments
• Ability to rapidly prototype, test, and iterate

Preferred

• Experience in one or more of: ROS2 and Robotics, Multimodal learning

You are energized by difficult problems that do not yet have established solutions. You enjoy building systems, not just models. You are equally comfortable reading research papers, writing production code, analyzing data, and testing systems on robots. You thrive in environments where rapid learning, experimentation, and real‑world validation matter more than organizational hierarchy. Most importantly, you want your work to improve people's lives.

Most AI today lives behind screens. At Glidance, your work will operate in the physical world.

You will help create systems that make real‑time decisions in dynamic human environments while improving independence and mobility for blind and low‑vision individuals.

This is an opportunity to help build one of the world's first large‑scale embodied intelligence platforms focused on human‑scale autonomy. The systems you help create today will influence how intelligent machines understand and navigate the real world tomorrow.