AI Robotics Engineer

Department: Software

Location: New York

Compensation: $160K – $220K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

AI Robotics Engineer

About Mecka AI

Mecka AI is building the data infrastructure layer for robotics and embodied AI.

We design and operate global systems for data capture, data labeling, and hardware-enabled workflows used by leading AI labs and robotics companies. Our datasets power models that learn from the physical world — enabling robots to understand, reason, and act in real environments.

We work closely with frontier robotics teams to bridge real-world data, simulation, and deployed robotic systems.

The Role

We're hiring an AI Robotics Engineer based in New York City to help bring robotic intelligence from models into real-world execution.

This is a highly applied role focused on deployment, integration, and system performance. You'll work on connecting perception, policy, and control into systems that actually function reliably on real robots.

This role is ideal for engineers coming from top robotics companies (e.g. humanoids, autonomy, manipulation) or top academic labs, who want to work on real-world systems and move quickly from idea → deployment.

Responsibilities

Model Integration & System Execution

• Integrate vision, multimodal, and policy models into robotic systems

• Translate model outputs into real-world control signals and actions

• Build the glue between perception → decision → actuation

Perception & State Estimation

• Develop and improve perception pipelines

• Work on pose estimation, scene understanding, and object interaction

• Ensure robustness in real-world, noisy environments

Control, Manipulation & Movement

• Implement and tune control systems for manipulation and locomotion

• Work on stability, smooth motion, and real-time responsiveness

• Handle real-world constraints like latency, drift, and noise

Simulation & Sim-to-Real

• Use simulation environments to test and validate behaviors

• Help bridge sim-to-real gaps

• Leverage real-world data to improve performance and generalization

Debugging & Deployment

• Debug full-stack issues across models, software, and hardware

• Work directly with robotic systems in real-world environments

• Diagnose failures and iterate quickly to improve system performance

Who You Are

Required Experience

• 4+ years of experience in robotics, AI/ML, or related fields

• Strong programming skills in Python (C++ strongly preferred)

• Experience working on real robotic systems or deployments

• Solid understanding of perception, control, or robotics fundamentals

• Experience integrating models into production or real-world systems

Target Backgrounds

• Experience at leading robotics companies (e.g. humanoids, autonomy, manipulation systems)

• Or MSc / PhD from top robotics programs (e.g. CMU, MIT, Stanford, ETH, etc.)

• Experience in applied robotics labs or systems-focused research environments

Strong Signals

• Experience with dexterous manipulation, hands, or locomotion

• Experience with simulation environments (Isaac, MuJoCo, etc.)

• Familiarity with ROS or similar middleware

• Experience with vision-language-action (VLA) or multimodal models

• Experience working with large-scale real-world datasets

You Are

• Highly practical and execution-focused

• Comfortable working across research and engineering boundaries

• Strong at debugging complex, real-world systems

• Able to move quickly from prototype → deployed system

• Motivated by building robots that actually work outside the lab

Why This Role

• Work directly on real-world robotics systems with leading AI labs

• Operate at the intersection of data, models, and physical systems

• High ownership and direct impact on deployments and performance

• Solve hard problems in manipulation, perception, and control

• Help shape how robotics systems are trained and deployed at scale