Aufgaben: You conduct applied research and development as a senior robotics engineer / postdoctoral researcher in the Embodied Mobile Agents (EMA) research group, deploying reinforcement learning and VLA/WAM policies on humanoid and quadruped robots in the real world. • You drive our current focus topics: flexible industrial automation through agentic embodied AI systems, robotic foundation models and reinforcement learning for mobile manipulation. In a new project, we will be looking into lowering the entry barrier to robot teleoperation and imitation learning for non-technical users through automated dataset curation and real-time feedback. • You turn results into publications and open-source code contributions. • You collaborate with companies, universities and other partners in Switzerland and the EU. Most of our projects are applied research and innovation projects with Swiss companies, mainly funded by Innosuisse.
Anforderungen: You hold a PhD in robotics, or in computer science or a related field with a focus on AI for robotics. • You are a pragmatic "maker" with a strong drive to build things that work and are appealing to use, and you have hands-on experience with real robots, including prototyping and modifying robots with off-the-shelf equipment. • You have proven competencies in robot learning (reinforcement learning, imitation learning, robot foundation models) and in classical robotics (motion planning, perception and navigation, teleoperation). • You are a strong programmer and work confidently with ROS / ROS 2, Nav2, MoveIt, PCL, OpenCV, the NVIDIA Jetson ecosystem and current deep learning frameworks. • You have a strong research track record in AI for robotics or computer vision, shown by publications, and your curiosity keeps you on top of the state of the art. • You are fluent in English; German is a plus. • We offer a position at the level of research associate, initially limited to 2 years.
Wir bieten: We offer working conditions and terms of employment commensurate with higher education institutions and actively promote personal development for staff in leadership and non-leadership positions. A detailed description of advantages and benefits can be found at Working at the ZHAW . The main points are listed below:
Stellenantritt: January 2027 or by appointment.
Pensum: Full-time, Half-time possible