Director, Embodied Intelligence/Robotics

Lab Summary:

The Emerging Technologies Group is uniquely positioned to be at the heart of Samsung Research America’s innovation engine aimed towards advancing Samsung’s product offerings across smartphones, wearables, TVs, XR devices, and identifying the next big growth drivers for Samsung across a range of emerging technologies. The group’s mission is to discover and incubate high-potential innovative technologies across the spectrum of fundamental and applied research that lay the foundation for future Samsung products and services. To achieve this mission, the group collaborates closely with both with external entities such as universities, startups, VCs, and government labs, and with several Samsung Product and Advanced Research labs. SRA’s programs enable research breakthroughs on cutting edge technologies and the Emerging Technologies Group is at the core of these programs.

Position Summary:

Samsung Research America is looking for someone who has solid technical skills and project experience in areas of robotics and embodied intelligence.

Our ideal candidate is excited about working together with researchers, developers, and roboticists to explore novel AI-led techniques towards generalizing robots to perform tasks in the real world. Samsung’s unique advantage in the consumer electronics market and growing focus on AI will provide you with exciting technical challenges and a rewarding career experience. By leveraging Samsung’s vast product ecosystem to deliver novel user experiences, your work will define Samsung’s future in robotics and significantly impact real-world users.

Position Responsibilities:

• Work with the project team to explore novel techniques, device interfaces, and policy architectures leveraging Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models to train robots effectively with limited available data
• Lead the team to prepare proof-of-concepts, demo/prototypes, design, and execute pilot studies using available robot platforms
• Lead the deployment of robot platforms and newly built data collection mechanisms for in-the-wild data aggregation in semi-structured and unstructured environments targeting high impact business areas
• Generate patents and scientific research papers for top-tier publications

Required Skills:

• PhD. degree in a technology or engineering discipline or equivalent combination of education, training
• 7 years of work experience after PhD. in the robotics domain
• Deep knowledge and experience in leveraging AI and VLA models to train a variety of robot embodiments (e.g. AMRs, fixed manipulators, dexterous humanoids, and more)
• Knowledge of latest trends on the advantages and disadvantages of various techniques in robot learning including manual data collection, algorithms for efficient policy architectures, and simulation
• Strong understanding of robotics fundamentals, including locomotion, manipulation, sensor inputs, SLAM, ROS, simulation environments (e.g. Nvidia Isaac-SIM), and policy architectures, particularly as it relates to semi-structured and unstructured environments
• Expansive network of accessible robotic expertise across industry and academia
• Passion for leading teams and providing both formal and informal mentorship
• Experience with wrangling, exploring, transforming, and analyzing datasets of varying size and complexity
• Knowledgeable of tools and processes to monitor model performance and data quality, including model tuning experience
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, and the ability to engage customers at a business level in addition to a technical level
• Sound knowledge of early-stage technology research programs: understanding user needs, gathering requirements, defining project scope and deliverables, building schedules and executing programs from inception to prototyping.
• Stay current with AI/ML and robot learning trends and research; be a thought leader in the Embodied Intelligence area

Special Attributes:

• Thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Contribute in a team-oriented environment, while driving your own agenda
• Prioritize multiple tasks in order to consistently meet deadlines
• Creatively solve problems in an analytical environment
• Resilience to overcome hurdles and address failures with alternative paths
• Adapt quickly to new environments, people, technologies and processes
• High caliber presentation skills with the ability to adapt message to the audience and situation
• Generate ideas while understanding and incorporating different points of view
• Must be willing to travel domestically and internationally (20%)