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Menlo

Researcher, World Models

LocationPalo Alto
Work modehybrid
Typefull-time
DepartmentBrain
Company size11+ people
First seen2mo ago
Last seen1d ago
About Menlo
Menlo Research is an Applied R&D lab building Asimov, an open-source humanoid robot platform, and the full software stack that powers it. Our mission is to make humanoid labor economically viable, turning software into physical labor at scale. We build across the full stack: hardware architecture, locomotion, autonomy, simulation, and infrastructure. We move fast, ship to real robots, and open-source everything we can. If you want your work to matter beyond a paper or a demo, this is the place.
The Role
We are hiring a Researcher to advance the world models at the core of Asimov’s ability to perceive, predict, and act. You will work at the intersection of self-supervised representation learning, predictive architectures, and embodied control, in close collaboration with our platform, firmware, and hardware teams.
What You’ll Do
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Design, train, and rigorously evaluate world models that let Asimov predict the consequences of actions across visual, proprioceptive, and force/torque modalities.
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Advance our self-supervised learning stack for visual and sensor representations, building on and extending the JEPA family (V-JEPA, I-JEPA, and related predictive-embedding approaches).
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Prototype and benchmark generative and predictive architectures (diffusion, DiT, flow matching, VAEs) against JEPA-style objectives for embodied prediction and planning.
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Own the data pipeline for your experiments end to end: curation, tooling, and scaling, without depending on a separate data-engineering team to move.
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Integrate what you build with our platform, firmware, and software teams so research reaches the robot, not just the paper.
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Contribute to sim-to-real transfer, inverse dynamics, and multi-modal sensor fusion, and publish or open-source work where it strengthens the field and the team.
What We Look For
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Proven modeling track record: you have trained models and can show solid, honest evaluations, not just training curves.
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JEPA fluency: you understand the joint-embedding predictive approach and can reason about where it fits versus alternatives.
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Breadth across approaches: familiarity with prior and adjacent work, including VLA (vision-language-action) models, and a view on their trade-offs.
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Depth in a modality: strong depth in at least one sensory domain (vision, audio, natural language, or similar).
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Strong data abilities: you get things done without depending on a whole data-engineering team.
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Solid engineering: you can implement, integrate, and ship what you build alongside platform, firmware, and software teams.
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Conversant, ideally deep, in several of: SSL for visual and sensor representations; world models (JEPA, V-JEPA, I-JEPA, LeJEPA, MJEPA); generative and predictive architectures (diffusion, DiT, flow matching, VAEs); robotics ML (VLA, inverse dynamics, sim-to-real, optical flow); sensor fusion (vision, proprioception, force/torque, multi-modal encoders); PyTorch, JAX, and distributed training.
Nice to Have
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Publications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, or RSS (or arXiv work with comparable citations).
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PhD or equivalent research experience in ML, robotics, or computer vision. Not required with a strong portfolio.
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Demonstrated hardware or robotics interest or hands-on experience.
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Strong communication: technical blogs, talks, or clear written research.
Why Join Menlo
World models are the bet that lets a humanoid generalize instead of memorize. This is a rare seat where your research runs on real hardware in short cycles, your data and modeling choices are yours to own, and your work ships in the open. If you want the distance between an idea and a walking robot to be measured in weeks, this is the room.
A Note on AI
You don’t need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect everyone at Menlo to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement. When that’s the case, we’ll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don’t treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make their work easier for others to build on.
Equal Opportunity and Accommodations
We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you’re excited about a role but don’t meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply. Menlo Research is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Menlo provides reasonable accommodations during the application process. If you need one, please let your recruiter know.
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