Head of AI (Confidential Search)

About the Company

We are pioneering advanced physical AI architectures at the intersection of multimodality, reinforcement learning, and physical systems. We operate in a highly collaborative, high-velocity environment and are looking for a visionary leader to define the next frontier of physical intelligence.

Role Overview

As the Head of AI, you will serve as both our chief scientific visionary and a hands-on researcher. You will lead, scale, and inspire our world-class research and engineering team from its current size to 20+ elite researchers and engineers. This is a rare, high-leverage leadership role for an eminent scientist who wants to remain technically hands-on while building a category-defining startup.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Vision & Strategy: Formulate and execute our long-term AI research roadmap, focusing on multimodality, reinforcement learning, and physical AI systems.
• Team Leadership & Scaling: Recruit, mentor, and lead a world-class team of AI researchers and engineers, scaling the organization to 20+ individuals.
• Hands-On Research: Lead by example by remaining actively involved in designing, training, and evaluating state-of-the-art foundational models.
• Scientific Excellence: Maintain and foster a culture of rigorous scientific inquiry, keeping the team at the absolute forefront of machine learning breakthroughs.

Requirements

• Eminent Pedigree: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related field from a top-tier academic institution.
• Proven Track Record: An exceptional publication record (Google Scholar) at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, RSS) and a history of working at globally recognized AI research labs or top-tier tech companies.
• Deep Technical Expertise: Deep domain expertise in Reinforcement Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodality, and/or Physical AI/Physical Systems.
• Leadership Experience: Demonstrated capability to recruit, build, and scale high-performing research teams in a fast-paced environment.
• Location: Based in or willing to relocate to the SF Bay Area to be in office 3+ days a week.