At TECNALIA, we are building an applied research group dedicated to solving the major challenges of Embodied AI **(Embodied AI**). Our mission is to create the next generation of intelligent robots capable of understanding, reasoning, and acting in complex, dynamic, and unstructured environments. We are seeking a Senior Researcher to lead our efforts at the forefront of robotics, focusing on the development of foundational models that learn manipulation and navigation skills through interaction with the physical world. *If you are proactive, autonomous, responsible, and solution-oriented, with the ability to adapt to new projects and enjoy teamwork.* *If you are interested in applied research and transferring developed technologies to companies, keep reading!* ***What You Will Do*** You will join a multidisciplinary team of excellence and collaborate with leading academic and industrial research centers across Europe. Your work will not only advance the scientific frontier but also have a direct impact on transferring disruptive technologies to strategic sectors. This role places **3D vision for physical interaction** as a fundamental pillar, alongside key research areas such as **Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models** and **large-scale reinforcement and imitation learning**. * **You will lead original research lines in Embodied AI**, from idea conception and hypothesis formulation to publishing results in top-tier scientific conferences (e.g., CoRL, RSS, ICRA, NeurIPS). * **You will design, train, and validate foundational models for robotics** (Vision\-Language\-Action models) that translate multimodal perception (vision, touch) and natural language instructions into robust and generalizable manipulation and navigation actions. * **You will develop and refine the complete ***sim\-to\-real*** pipeline**, using high-fidelity simulators like NVIDIA Isaac Sim to generate large-scale synthetic data and train policies that transfer effectively to our fleet of physical robots. * **You will experiment with novel learning architectures** and training paradigms (reinforcement learning, imitation learning, self-supervised learning) to equip robots with complex skills, such as dexterous manipulation of deformable objects or assembly in unstructured environments. * **You will closely collaborate with a multidisciplinary team** of hardware and software engineers and domain experts to integrate new sensing and actuation capabilities into our learning systems. ***What We Offer*** * The opportunity to **lead cutting-edge research** with a high degree of intellectual autonomy and to define the strategic direction of our Embodied AI research. * Access to **state-of-the-art computational resources and robotic hardware** to conduct ambitious research. * An environment that **encourages and supports publication in top-tier scientific conferences and journals**. * **Collaboration with a network of excellence** including Europe’s leading universities and research centers, participating in flagship initiatives such as Horizon Europe projects. * A solid career path with opportunities for development and growth within a European reference technology center. * Work-life balance measures. * **Qualifications:** + A PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field will be highly valued. * **Languages: fluent English (scientific working language) and Spanish.** * **Essential Knowledge:** + Experience in **3D computer vision** for robotics, including scene reconstruction, neural radiance fields (NeRFs), 3D Gaussian Splatting, and spatial reasoning. + Strong theoretical and practical knowledge of **reinforcement learning (RL)** and **imitation learning (IL)**, including behavior cloning and diffusion policies. + Practical experience developing and training large-scale models based on the **Transformer architecture**, especially **Vision\-Language Models (VLMs)** and **Vision\-Language\-Action (VLA) models**. * **Technical Skills:** + Excellent proficiency in **Python** and deep learning frameworks such as **PyTorch** (preferred) or TensorFlow. + Demonstrable experience with high-fidelity robotic simulators, particularly **NVIDIA Isaac Sim** and the **Omniverse platform**. + Experience in ***sim\-to\-real*** policy transfer and working with real robotic hardware (e.g., Franka Emika arms) will be highly valued. * **Interpersonal Skills:** + Excellent communication skills (written and oral), ability to mentor junior researchers, and collaborate effectively in an international environment. + Availability to travel. * **Publications:** + Evidence of impactful research through first-author publications at top-tier robotics and machine learning conferences (e.g., CoRL, RSS, ICRA, NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR). **Additionally, the following will be positively considered:** * Experience in **distributed training** of large-scale AI models on GPU clusters. * **Contributions to relevant open-source projects** in robotics or artificial intelligence. * Experience managing and curating **large robotic datasets** (e.g., in HDF5 format, datasets like Open X\-Embodiment). * Knowledge of emerging model architectures beyond Transformers (e.g., State Space Models, Mamba). * Experience preparing proposals for European research projects (e.g., Horizon Europe). *We welcome applications from candidates with a disability certificate of 33% or higher, in compliance with current legislation, the General Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and their Social Inclusion (LGD).*