Head of Robot Software, Large Behavior Models

Full-time

Job Description

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team in Automated Driving, Energy & Materials, Human-Centered AI, Human Interactive Driving, Large Behavior Models, and Robotics.

The Mission

Make general-purpose robots a reality.

The Challenge

We envision a future where robots assist with household chores and cooking, aid the older population in maintaining their independence, and enable people to spend more time on the activities they enjoy most. To achieve this, robots need to be able to operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments. Our mission is to answer the question “What will it take to create truly general-purpose robots that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in settings like human homes with minimal human supervision?”. We believe that the answer lies in cultivating large-scale datasets of physical interaction from a variety of sources and building on the latest advances in machine learning to learn general-purpose robot behaviors from this data.

Robotics

The mission of TRI Robotics is to invent and prove new robotic capabilities required to enable home robots to solve the challenges faced by an aging society. As part of that mission, we are developing a sophisticated suite of open-source robotics software called Drake (https://drake.mit.edu (https://drake.mit.edu/)) for use in our internal robotics projects and the wider community of advanced robotics researchers.

The Team

Join Toyota Research Institute’s LBM-C division to change the world by creating and shipping useful general-purpose AI-driven robots. Be responsible for the software vision end-to-end and turn groundbreaking R&D into deployed products.

The Opportunity

We're looking for a Head of Robot Software to lead and own our high-performance robotics stack, from driver interfaces and real-time control to logging pipelines and immersive VR teleoperation. You’ll define architecture, implement performant and reliable robot software, and lead and scale a team that ships real robots.

Responsibilities

Own the Stack: Lead architecting and delivery of the full robot software stack including middleware, control loops, logging pipelines, and immersive teleoperation interfaces.

Hands-On Ownership: Build and optimize our mixed C++/Python codebase; troubleshoot complex robot systems; and create intuitive and capable robots.

Build & Scale: Lead sprint planning, drive adoption high-quality engineering best practices; recruit and mentor engineers to ensure technical excellence across the team.

Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with hardware, AI, and deployment teams to move from prototype to production.

Qualifications

Proven Hands-On Track Record: 10+ years writing software for customer-deployed robots or autonomous vehicles, covering the full lifecycle of software, from design to development to deployment.

Technical Mastery: Expert in C++ and Python; deep familiarity with modern robot software stacks, including middleware, messaging, timing, and high-throughput logging.

Technical Leadership: Demonstrated success leading teams that ship real-world robotics software and scaling engineering orgs.

Collaboration: Exceptional communicator who thrives in a collaborative, cross-functional, and fast-moving environment.

Bonus Qualifications

Experience integrating ML-based autonomy into real-time systems

Expertise in cloud-scale telemetry and data architectures

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TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people with unique backgrounds, education and life experiences. We are dedicated to fostering an innovative and collaborative environment by living the values that are an essential part of our culture. We believe diversity makes us stronger and are proud to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for all, without regard to an applicant’s race, color, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, religion, marital status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state or local laws.

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