Our PHI lab is looking for a Research Engineer to power our research on foundation models for robotics and smart factories. You are the crucial link between idea and implementation. You will work alongside our scientists to build, test, and scale our research PoCs.

We like testing and scaling our research on real-world settings, so you will be the architect and builder, turning our research ideas into tangible, working prototypes. You will have the chance to develop, improve and test our foundational models on different industry-inspired use cases, co-author research papers at top-tier conference/journals, drive and lead our CI/CD frameworks.

What you’ll get to work on:

• Collaborate directly with research scientists and PhD students to shape our technical strategy and PoCs.
• Own the engineering lifecycle: from setting up robust data pipelines to fine-tuning and deploying large-scale foundational models for robotics.
• Cooperate on research projects at the intersection of differential geometry, physics, and generative models.
• Get hands-on with our robotics stack (e.g., ROS2, Mujoco, NVIDIA Isaac Sim) to test and validate our creations.

Where are you going to apply your cool research? We are considering the following applications (among many others)

• Single or dual-arm robotic manipulation for smart factories
• Safe human-robot collaboration
• Next-gen digital twins and world models

This role is probably for you if:

• You hold a MSc/PhD in AI, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• You have solid, hands-on experience training and fine-tuning foundation models using tools like the Hugging Face ecosystem, PEFT, PyTorch FSDP, among others.
• You are up to building clean data and ML loops (experience with tools like MLflow or Weights & Biases is a huge plus).
• You love using CI/CD tools and are passionate about robust and reproducible research.
• You have proven experience in robotics, with practical skills in ROS2, Mujoco, or Isaac Sim.

What we offer:

• A team: You will be surrounded by a super-smart and creative team of researchers and engineers who are as passionate about AI and robotics as you are. We thrive on collaboration and big ideas. We will support you to advance your career!
• Wide impact: We build and we publish. You will have the chance to co-author papers for top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, CoRL, and R:SS. You will also collaborate in national and EU industrial and research projects, your work will be seen.
• An office at the epicenter of tech: Our home base is at OGR Torino, the city’s coolest tech and innovation hub. You are not just getting a desk; you are getting a front-row seat to Italy’s tech scene, with endless events, meetups, and creative people right outside your door.
• An unbeatable lifestyle in Turin: Seriously, this city is amazing. Imagine weekends hiking in the Alps, sipping some of the world’s best coffee and wine, and enjoying incredible food. You are a quick train ride from Milan for a city fix or the Mediterranean coast for a beach day.
• The essentials, covered: Of course, we offer a competitive salary and provide travel support for conferences and events. Moreover, you will have access to high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

If you’re passionate about building what’s next and seeing your code make robots smarter, we’d love to connect. Let’s build together!

Start Date: Flexible, as soon as possible.

Application requirements:

• Cover letter (max.1 page) describing how your profile fits this specific positionand telling us about your professional goals/projects within this topic.
• CV with publications and open-source projects portfolio (e.g., GitHub)