Your Recent Role and Team Sanctuary, a world leader in building AI-based control systems for intelligent robots, is seeking a Principal Scientist to support our next generation of robot learning capability. This role sits at the intersection of deep technical understanding and rigorous validation: you will push the boundary of what robots can learn to do, and you will run the experiments that show which approaches have real merit and are worth scaling into a production capability. Deep expertise in at least one or more areas of robot learning — RL and imitation learning, simulation and sim2real, data collection, or world and foundation models — and a working knowledge or awareness of the rest.

This role begins with reviewing everything we are doing and introducing new approaches: you will scope and run focused, high-leverage projects, and bring in support as your work proves out. Successful projects will drive larger projects and more resources.

Our Success

Criteria - Identify, scope, and lead research initiatives, working with contributors from across the company - Design and run experiments that validate early hypotheses, surfacing what works, what does not, and what deserves further investment - Demonstrate the merit of new approaches through hands‑on experimentation, building the evidence base that demonstrates readiness to scale toward production - Ability to create, develop, and enhance cutting‑edge robot learning algorithms — RL, imitation learning, world models, foundation models, or approaches we have not tried — and evaluate their performance in practical robotic applications - Devise training and data collection pipelines to expedite implementation on physical robots - Discover strategies for enhancing current learning processes,



considering key performance metrics like sample efficiency, speed, computational resources, and scalability - Collaborate within a diverse team to devise, implement, and harden algorithms for production use, and investigate the root causes in existing implementations - Translate Machine Learning research and trained models into real‑world robotic products, working closely with engineering to validate that promising methods hold up as they move toward our cross‑platform software framework - Stay current with the latest developments in robot learning — including RL/IL, world models, and foundation models — and their application in robotics Your Experience Qualifications - Ph.D. in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or equivalent practical background in robot learning - 5+ years of hands‑on experience implementing and deploying robotic manipulation tasks, both in simulation and on physical robots - Experience transitioning Machine Learning research and trained models into real‑world production - Active involvement integrating Machine Learning models into a robotics platform - Strong technical judgment and the ability to form and defend an independent point of view - Independently able to evaluate a landscape, propose an approach,



complete a proof‑of‑concept and document and articulate the results to a cross‑functional team - Comfortable challenging assumptions and driving alignment across technical stakeholders Deep expertise in at least one of - Applying various Reinforcement Learning and/or Imitation Learning methods, with focus on robotics in the real world - Developing and optimizing large‑batch parallel simulations, and proven expertise in sim‑to‑real transfer - Designing and scaling data collection workflows and datasets for robot learning on physical systems - Building or fine‑tuning world models or foundation models for robotics Nice to Have - Proven expertise in continual learning, employing adaptive model training to improve long‑term performance and accuracy - Research contributions at venues such as ICRA, IROS, CoRL, or NeurIPS, or open‑source work Skills - Development with Python 3.8 or later - Working knowledge of PyTorch and/or TensorFlow - Familiarity with ROS2 - Strong understanding of modern robot learning methods and their application Traits - Above all else, a consistently positive attitude and a willingness to do whatever it takes to create robust solutions to complex problems - Pragmatic and outcome‑oriented, with a bias toward turning advanced research into real‑world products - Entrepreneurial: comfortable scoping and running a project with a cross‑functional team - Strong leadership skills in organizing R&D; work for projects, with the ability to lead a cross functional team - Curious, adaptable, and willing to go deep into unfamiliar technical areas when needed - Patience, persistence, and attention to detail when resolving performance issues - Ability to multitask and prioritize in a fast‑paced environment

📌 Principal Scientist, Physical AI (Vancouver)
🏢 Sanctuary
📍 Vancouver