Head of Vision – Language – Action (VLA) Development – Manipulation
Location: London – 5 days in the office
Our Clients
They are the UK’s first AI and robotics company dedicated to building advanced, reliable, and commercially scalable humanoid robots. Their flagship platform, HMND-01, is a next-generation labour automation system designed to deliver efficient, adaptable performance across real-world environments, beginning with industrial applications.
Responsibilities
* Lead the strategy and execution of representation learning, behaviour cloning, and reinforcement learning programs.
* Drive large-scale post-training for multi-modal LLM / VLM / VLA systems, integrating vision, audio, proprioception, LiDAR, and point cloud data.
* Build pipelines to continuously collect, version, label, and evaluate simulation and tele-operation data.
* Partner with MLOps and platform teams to scale distributed training and optimise models for real-time edge inference.
* Grow, mentor, and unblock a high-performing team of researchers and engineers.
Requirements
* 6+ years developing deep learning systems, with 2+ years in technical leadership.
* Hands-on experience with LLM/VLM architecture design and large-scale training.
* Proven expertise in robotics or autonomous systems (behaviour cloning, actor-critic, offline RL).
* Experience deploying to humanoid or legged robots.
* Track record of shipping to real hardware and refining via data flywheels.
* Background in autonomous control and planning.
* Contributions to research or open-source in multi-modal transformers, diffusion control, or world models.
* Familiarity with OpenVLA, π models, or other VLA frameworks.
Benefits
* Competitive compensation and stock options.
* Paid vacation (aligned with local labour regulations).
* Opportunities to collaborate across our teams in Vancouver and Boston.
* Office perks including meals, snacks, and team events.
* High autonomy and direct ownership of impactful initiatives.
* Work with leading experts across AI, robotics, and engineering.
* A fast-moving, transparent, low-bureaucracy startup environment.