Principal Applied Scientist, Mobile Manipulation Robotics

Amazon Robotics is revolutionizing warehouse automation at unprecedented scale. We are looking for a technical lead to own the whole-body planning control and optimization stack for the Phoenix mobile manipulation this role you will design and ship motion planners and controllers that coordinate all of Phoenixs degrees of freedom (mobile base torso arm and end-effector) as a single unified system enabling smooth safe and production-ready autonomous manipulation in Amazon fulfillment environments.

You will architect whole-body motion planning pipelines (task-and-motion planning trajectory optimization) that generate collision-free time-efficient trajectories across the full kinematic chain. You will develop and tune real-time whole-body controllers including QP-based and model-predictive approaches and integrate them with the Foundry Controller mainline. A key part of the role is ensuring planner-generated trajectories are high-quality enough to train downstream foundation model policies (e.g. π0.5) at scale. You will also extend Phoenixs Control Barrier Function (CBF) safety architecture guaranteeing constraint satisfaction from planning through execution.


About the team
Amazon Robotics develops and deploys advanced robotic systems that power Amazons fulfillment centers worldwide. Our innovations in mobile manipulation autonomous navigation and human-robot collaboration are transforming how products move through our network enabling faster delivery times while creating safer more ergonomic work environments for our associates.

- PhD in Robotics Computer Science Mechanical Engineering or a related field with 7 years of relevant research experience after degree; or Masters degree with 12 years of equivalent experience
- Experience developing and deploying real-time controllers on physical robotic hardware
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy across multiple teams and organizations

- Proficiency in Python and C with experience writing production-grade code
- Proven track record of publications at top-tier venues (e.g. CVPR ICCV ECCV NeurIPS ICRA RSS CoRL)
- Experience with real-time perception on resource-constrained hardware (edge compute embedded GPUs)
- Track record of building perception systems that generalize across multiple sensor configurations or robot platforms
- Experience with foundation models or large-scale self-supervised learning applied to robotics perception

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status disability or other legally protected status.

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The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience qualifications and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical dental vision prescription Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans EAP Mental Health Support Medical Advice Line Flexible Spending Accounts Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage) 401(k) matching paid time off and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at MA North Reading - 198900.00 - 269000.00 USD annually