Physical AI Scientist

What We're Building:

We have been quietly building the foundational layers of our Physical AI Scientist platform:

🤖 Physical AI that can operate scientific instruments with human-level dexterity.

🧪 Scientific AI that can analyze results, reason about next steps, and close the loop autonomously.

This is an incredibly ambitious mission, but we believe that a team of ambitious people with high ownership can accomplish incredible things.

The Team:

• We’re a team of passionate, mission-driven engineers from companies like Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX, and Neuralink. We’re collaborative and love moving fast, both with our product and on team trips skiing or go-karting!
• As a team, we love nerding out about engineering and robotics — plus other topics like race cars or cooking. We like learning new things and then sharing our new knowledge with each other.
• Our team is opinionated and straightforward. We don’t mind intense discussions about design tradeoffs. If we have arguments or miscommunication, we resolve conflicts quickly and empathetically.

In this role, you will:

• Develop robotic solutions to manipulate and control biology tools designed for humans
• Develop and implement motion planning algorithms to avoid collisions in a complex and dynamic environment
• Use computer vision to work with consumables and equipment that humans use
• Integrate, test, and debug software solutions in simulation and on physical robots
• Work with partner scientists at customer labs to understand their pain points, ideate on creative solutions, decompose into individual projects, and guide implementation and deployment
• Besides your focus on robustness and performance, you’ll be expected to identify opportunities for simplification, and to design for scalability
• This position is 100% in-person, you must be able to come on-site to our San Francisco office. We do not offer hybrid roles at Medra. We do offer relocation benefits for applicants that need to relocate.

Let's talk if you have:

• 4+ years of experience designing and building algorithms for robotics systems
• Experience or familiarity with robot arm manipulators
• Proficient in Python
• Relevant research/work experience in one or more of the following areas: motion planning and trajectory optimization, kinematics and dynamics, and control.
• Experience with software engineering tools and best practices in production
• A hacker’s mindset - getting quickly to a good-enough solution
• A willingness to wear many hats / a flexible attitude towards responsibilities and scope
• BS/MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent experience

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience with robotic simulation systems such as PyBullet or MuJoCo
• Experience with robotics in a laboratory or manufacturing environment
• Understanding of software communication protocols (ZMQ, Redis, gRPC, etc…)
• Contribution to software for a hardware product that shipped
• Experience with robotics manipulation

What we offer:

• 401k
• Medical insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Relocation benefits
• Unlimited PTO
• Weekday dinners

Medra is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies. We value diversity at Medra and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!