Senior ML Engineer (VLA & Navigation)

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Humanoid is the first AI and robotics company in the UK, creating the world’s most advanced, reliable, commercially scalable, and safe humanoid robots. Our first humanoid robot HMND 01 is a next-gen labour automation unit, providing highly efficient services across various use cases, starting with industrial applications.


We are looking for the Senior ML Engineer (VLA & Navigation) to join our team based in London, UK.


What You'll Do


  • Develop next-generation spatial understanding systems for robot locomotion and manipulation, integrating perception and high-level reasoning.
  • Work on open-ended navigation powered by Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models — enabling robots to understand context, predict intent, and act in complex, dynamic environments.
  • Design and scale auto-labeling and large-scale data pipelines to train and evaluate multimodal models for navigation and interaction.
  • Develop and implement scene understanding and 3D reconstruction methods that give robots persistent spatial memory and geometric awareness.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional research and engineering teams to bring large vision-language models into real-world robotic systems.
  • Stay ahead of the field — rapidly evaluate new model architectures, benchmarks, and datasets to guide our embodied AI roadmap


What We're Looking For


  • Deep experience in machine learning for vision or embodied AI, ideally with large models (VLMs, VLAs, transformers, diffusion, or multi-modal architectures).
  • Strong background in scene understanding, spatial reasoning, or 3D reconstruction from visual data.
  • Proficiency in PyTorch and hands-on experience building, fine-tuning, and deploying large-scale ML systems.
  • Strong experimental and research skills — capable of taking projects from concept to model training, evaluation, and robot integration.
  • Comfortable working in a fast-moving, research-driven environment with evolving models, data, and tools.


What We Offer


  • Meaningful time off to rest and recharge: 23 days of annual leave (accrued), separate sick leave, and paid bank holidays and company holidays.
  • Fully funded private healthcare for UK employees, with broad provider access, virtual and in‑person care, and strong mental health and serious illness support.
  • Pension scheme with a total 8% contribution (5% employee, 3% employer) on full earnings.
  • Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in‑office.
  • Collaboration with top‑tier engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics.
  • Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives.
”, “datePosted”: “2026-05-17”, “hiringOrganization”: { “@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “Humanoid”, “sameAs”: “https://uk.whatjobs.com/pub_api__cpl__434952124__4861?utm_campaign=publisher&utm_medium=api&utm_source=4861&geoID=33” }, “jobLocation”: { “@type”: “Place”, “address”: { “@type”: “PostalAddress”, “addressLocality”: “London” } } }
Company: Humanoid
Apply for the Senior ML Engineer (VLA & Navigation)
Location: London
Job Description:

Humanoid is the first AI and robotics company in the UK, creating the world’s most advanced, reliable, commercially scalable, and safe humanoid robots. Our first humanoid robot HMND 01 is a next-gen labour automation unit, providing highly efficient services across various use cases, starting with industrial applications.

We are looking for the Senior ML Engineer (VLA & Navigation) to join our team based in London, UK.

What You’ll Do

  • Develop next-generation spatial understanding systems for robot locomotion and manipulation, integrating perception and high-level reasoning.
  • Work on open-ended navigation powered by Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models — enabling robots to understand context, predict intent, and act in complex, dynamic environments.
  • Design and scale auto-labeling and large-scale data pipelines to train and evaluate multimodal models for navigation and interaction.
  • Develop and implement scene understanding and 3D reconstruction methods that give robots persistent spatial memory and geometric awareness.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional research and engineering teams to bring large vision-language models into real-world robotic systems.
  • Stay ahead of the field — rapidly evaluate new model architectures, benchmarks, and datasets to guide our embodied AI roadmap

What We’re Looking For

  • Deep experience in machine learning for vision or embodied AI, ideally with large models (VLMs, VLAs, transformers, diffusion, or multi-modal architectures).
  • Strong background in scene understanding, spatial reasoning, or 3D reconstruction from visual data.
  • Proficiency in PyTorch and hands-on experience building, fine-tuning, and deploying large-scale ML systems.
  • Strong experimental and research skills — capable of taking projects from concept to model training, evaluation, and robot integration.
  • Comfortable working in a fast-moving, research-driven environment with evolving models, data, and tools.

What We Offer

  • Meaningful time off to rest and recharge: 23 days of annual leave (accrued), separate sick leave, and paid bank holidays and company holidays.
  • Fully funded private healthcare for UK employees, with broad provider access, virtual and in‑person care, and strong mental health and serious illness support.
  • Pension scheme with a total 8% contribution (5% employee, 3% employer) on full earnings.
  • Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in‑office.
  • Collaboration with top‑tier engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics.
  • Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives.

Posted: May 17th, 2026