Associate Director Physical AI

Our Opportunity:

Our fastgrowing Warehouse & Fulfillment Center teams are the heart of our operations helping ensure millions of pet families around the country receive their pet supplies and medicines when they need them.Chewys AI & Data Innovation organization is developing cuttingedge technology to manipulate items across our extensive inventory.

A key element of this initiative involves capturing modeling and manipulating a wide variety of productsranging from cat toys to large bags of dog food. Our work spans realworld and physics simulation environments enabling us to validate refine and iterate on solutions for ongoing improvement.

We are seeking a big thinker to provide technical leadership hands on science and engineering vision in building an innovative environment that bridges both our realworld lab in Woburn MA and simulated platforms. Fulfill your potential alongside dedicated Team Members responsible for providing bestinclass delivery experiences and supply chain expertise!

WHO YOU ARE:

• Passionate about Simulation and Curation: Youre excited to build curate and develop a stateoftheart simulation environment that supports physicalworld libraries and deformable objects (e.g. dog food bags .
• Interest in Hybrid Learning: Fascinated by designing and creating environments for hybrid realworld and simulated reinforcement learning to address grasping and manipulation challenges.
• Problem Solver for Scale: Motivated by the challenge of manipulating a catalog of 115000 diverse items spanning a wide variety of ecommerce package types.
• Team Leader and Mentor: Skilled in mentoring and leading a highly capable engineering and science team with a clear focus on impactful goals that drive business outcomes.
• Influential Thinker: Inspired to see your ideas pipelines and experiments influence toplevel decisionmakers and deliver measurable business results.
• Innovative Collaborator: Committed to understanding and refining problem statements without overconstraining goal definitions and innovating in a collaborative environment to achieve optimal solutions.

WHAT YOULL DO:

• Robot Development: Design and test robot motion control algorithms in simulated environments before deployment on real hardware.
• Grasping and Manipulation: Develop and validate solutions for handling a wide variety of products within our catalog.
• Business Impact: This work will have a direct impact on saving money for our customers and creating a safer work environment for our team members.
• Connect & Grow: There will be a requirement to travel and visit vendors as well as attend trade shows representing the company and fostering key business relationships. Expect up to 10 travel.

WHAT YOULL NEED:

• Bachelors Degree or equivalent experience (AI Data Science Engineering MIS CS or related field).
• Deep Knowledge of Robotics Simulation: Extensive experience with physical robotics simulators including expertise in physics engines environment creation sensor modeling and running complex robot simulations.
• Expertise in Physical Simulation: Handson experience with physicallevel simulation tools such as Isaac Sim Gazebo PyBullet or MuJoCo. Ability to build robot models set up environments program sensor data and implement complex physics interactions within simulation platforms.
• Physics Engine Expertise Deep familiarity with physics engines embedded in simulation tools ensuring accurate simulation of robot dynamics and environmental interactions.
• Advanced Programming Skills Strong coding proficiency in C Python or other appropriate languages for developing simulation scripts and control algorithms.
• Sensor Modeling Experience designing realistic sensor models such as LiDAR cameras and IMUs within simulation tools to support perception algorithms.
• Environment Design Capability to create diverse and complex simulated environments using terrain editing tools and object libraries.
• Simulation Optimization Expertise in techniques for optimizing simulation performance to support realtime control and largescale testing.

HIGHLY DESIRABLE:

• Publications in Physical AI Robotics Simulation knowledge systems or related areas.
• Advanced degrees (Masters or PhD) in AI Robotics Systems Engineering or Applied Science.
• Contributions to opensource projects in Robotics Simulation or Physical AI.
• Exposure to dynamic industries such as ecommerce supply chain or where Robotics and AI intelligence drives innovation.

If youre excited to tackle unique challenges in physical simulation and robotics while mentoring a talented team this is your opportunity to make a significant impact in a fastpaced and innovative environment.

Required Experience:

Director