Team Lead; f​/m​/d Robotics Foundation Models

Team Lead (f/m/d) for Robotics Foundation Models

Hexagon Robotics is a division of Hexagon – a global leader in precision measurement. The division develops humanoid robots for industrial sectors to address labor shortages and accelerate the transition from automation to autonomy. Our first humanoid, AEON, was launched in June 2025 and is already in pilots with five customers.

We're hiring a Team Lead for Robotics Foundation Models to create and lead a team dedicated to evaluating, fine-tuning, and deploying foundation models for robotic manipulation. This is a critical leadership role in our growing team: you will shape the technical direction, hire your team, and bridge the gap between frontier AI research and a shipping industrial product.

• Help define the VLA strategy — select, evaluate, and benchmark foundation models for industrial manipulation tasks on humanoid hardware
• Drive fine-tuning and adaptation — design efficient pipelines to specialize large pre-trained models on Hexagon's proprietary demonstration data, maximizing performance under real compute and data constraints
• Build and lead a high-performing team — recruit, mentor, and grow a team of ML engineers and researchers; set a culture of rapid experimentation with rigorous evaluation
• Ship models into production — work closely with the MLOps/Data Ops and Imitation Learning teams to deploy models on our robots in challenging customer environments
• Close the loop with product — collaborate with Product and Application Engineering to translate customer requirements into learning objectives; prioritize work that moves the needle for real-world deployments
• Leverage and build partnerships — co-engineer with NVIDIA and Microsoft and other strategic partners to accelerate development and stay at the frontier; help build new strategic partnerships

• PhD (or equivalent depth of experience) in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field
• 2+ years experience managing or technically leading a team (hiring, road mapping, mentoring)
• Deep, hands‑on expertise with vision-language, vision-language-action models or other foundation models (world models) — you have trained, fine‑tuned, or deployed at least one large‑scale foundation model
• Professional experience training and deploying ML models, with strong Python and deep learning framework skills (PyTorch)
• Track record of translating research into working systems (papers + shipped product/demo)
• Comfort operating in a fast‑paced startup‑like environment inside a larger organization

• Experience with robotic manipulation and/ or humanoid platforms
• Familiarity with VLAs, robotic foundation models and/or diffusion/flow‑matching policies
• Experience with efficient fine‑tuning techniques (LoRA, adapter methods, distillation)
• Publications or visible contributions in VLA, embodied AI, or robot learning
• Comfort operating in a fast‑paced startup‑like environment inside a larger organization

• Flexible working hours and a hybrid model for real work‑life balance
• CHF 500 mobility credit for sustainable commuting
• Bonus system & strong pension contributions
• Tailored training & development opportunities
• Relocation support for a smooth start
• Discounts on health, mobility & entertainment
• Team events and a flat hierarchy where your voice counts
• A warm, international culture built on respect and collaboration