Head of AI (hands-on)
VC-backed Robotics Startup | London (on-site, with flexibility)
Compensation: Up to £220k + equity package
About
This is a VC-backed robotics company building the intelligence layer for industrial machines — forklifts, cranes, excavators and other heavy equipment. The approach is pragmatic: start with remote teleoperation to generate real-world operator data at scale, then train Vision-Language-Action models toward increasing autonomy.
The teleoperation system is live and generating data. The autonomy stack is being built on top of it now. The near-term approach is imitation learning on open VLA foundations, adapted to proprietary operator data. RL follows once the baseline is proven.
This is a founding hire to lead the research efforts, working alongside the CTO and CEO — setting technical direction, owning the model stack, and hiring a team of 6–7 over the coming months.
What you’ll do
- Own the model stack end-to-end — architecture, training, evaluation, and iteration
- Adapt and fine-tune open VLA foundations on proprietary operator data from live teleoperation
- Define and execute the near-term AI roadmap, starting with imitation learning
- Build toward RL-based methods once the imitation learning baseline is validated
- Translate research ideas into production-ready systems running on physical machines
- Set technical direction for the AI team and hire into it as the company scales
- Work directly with the CTO on strategy, roadmap, and team structure
What you’ll need
- Strong background in robotics, embodied AI, or physical autonomy
- Hands-on RL experience — applied to real systems, not just simulation
- Experience building or fine-tuning foundation models at scale (ideally VLA-style architectures)
- Track record deploying models in real-world environments, not just benchmarks
- Comfortable operating as a player-coach: technically hands-on, capable of leading a team
- Applied research focus — you deliver to production, not papers
- Background at a robotics lab, autonomous vehicle company, or embodied AI team
Shortlisted candidates will be contacted within 48 hours.
…