Head of Vision – Language – Action (VLA) Development – Manipulation

 

Our Clients

They are the UK’s first AI and robotics company dedicated to building advanced, reliable, and commercially scalable humanoid robots. Their flagship platform, HMND-01, is a next-generation labour automation system designed to deliver efficient, adaptable performance across real-world environments, beginning with industrial applications.

 

Responsibilities

  • Lead the strategy and execution of representation learning, behaviour cloning, and reinforcement learning programs.
  • Drive large-scale post-training for multi-modal LLM / VLM / VLA systems, integrating vision, audio, proprioception, LiDAR, and point cloud data.
  • Build pipelines to continuously collect, version, label, and evaluate simulation and tele-operation data.
  • Partner with MLOps and platform teams to scale distributed training and optimise models for real-time edge inference.
  • Grow, mentor, and unblock a high-performing team of researchers and engineers.

 

Requirements

  • 6+ years developing deep learning systems, with 2+ years in technical leadership.
  • Hands-on experience with LLM/VLM architecture design and large-scale training.
  • Proven expertise in robotics or autonomous systems (behaviour cloning, actor-critic, offline RL).
  • Experience deploying to humanoid or legged robots.
  • Track record of shipping to real hardware and refining via data flywheels.
  • Background in autonomous control and planning.
  • Contributions to research or open-source in multi-modal transformers, diffusion control, or world models.
  • Familiarity with OpenVLA, π models, or other VLA frameworks.

 

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation and stock options.
  • Paid vacation (aligned with local labour regulations).
  • Opportunities to collaborate across our teams in Vancouver and Boston.
  • Office perks including meals, snacks, and team events.
  • High autonomy and direct ownership of impactful initiatives.
  • Work with leading experts across AI, robotics, and engineering.
  • A fast-moving, transparent, low-bureaucracy startup environment.
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