Microsoft Research is seeking exceptional researchers passionate about making robots a helpful and safe part of everyday reality. As a member of our team and its collaborations, you will do ground-breaking research at the junction of decision-making (imitation learning, RL, planning) and large multimodal models to enable robots to act and learn robustly in weakly structured environments. **Responsibilities** + Conduct research in multimodal model training and inferenceas well asdata-efficient learning for decision making to advance state of the art in mobile robotic manipulation. + Build proofs of concept that demonstrate the effectiveness of your approaches on physical robothardware. + Actively contribute to team projects as well as collaborations with Microsoft-internal and external partners. + Engage in open research activities, including publishing your research findings. **Qualifications** **Required qualifications** : + PhD in AI/ML, physics, statistics, mechanical engineering, or closely related areas. + Well-established track record of research publications, open-source software releases, and other scientific activities. + Demonstrated expertise with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and strong Python programming skills. **Other Requirements:** As a part of you application, please submit the following materials as attachments: + Your CV. + Two conference, journal, or arXiv articles, book chapters, or equivalent writing samples that best demonstrate your expertise. + **(Optional)** The names of two references. **Preferred qualifications:** + Experience with at least one project with a publicly available codebase where the candidatehas contributed to LLM/VLM/VLA pre- or post-training. + At least one top-tier-venue publication with empirical evaluation done by the candidate onphysical robot hardware. + Experience with at least one project with a publicly available codebase where the candidate has contributed to implementing an imitationlearning, RL, or planning approach. + Experience with MuJoCo or a PhysX-based simulation toolkit such as IsaacSim. + Demonstrated ability to collaborate, communicate effectively, and work as part of a team. Research Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $117,200 - $229,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $153,600 - $250,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis. \#Research #MSRR Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .