Senior AI Engineer - VLA Foundation Model, Zürich (Kreis 11)

Senior AI Engineer - VLA Foundation Model

role at

RIVR

RIVR is a Swiss robotics company pioneering Physical AI and robotic solutions to revolutionize last‑mile delivery, giving one human the power of 1000. The company combines artificial neural networks with innovative robot designs featuring wheels and legs to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and scalability. Founded as Swiss‑Mile and rebranded to RIVR in 2025, the team is known for pioneering robotic design and neural‑network applications that improve environmental understanding and decision‑making. With a robust research foundation and contributions from ETH Zurich, RIVR leads in translating AI and robotics into practical, real‑world applications.

RIVR is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team that values every perspective. If you’re passionate about driving innovation in robotics and creating meaningful impact, we encourage you to apply and bring your unique self to our team.

Job Description Our fleet of delivery robots operates globally, generating vast amounts of real‑world data. By utilizing Vision‑Language‑Action (VLA) models, large‑scale generalist models, generative AI, and related methods, we can leverage this data to significantly enhance robot autonomy, navigation, and manipulation skills. In this role you will develop multi‑modal models that enable robots to autonomously generate actions from demonstrations, real‑time sensor data, and natural‑language commands. We seek an expert in VLA models, imitation learning, and generative AI techniques with deep knowledge of supervised and self‑supervised learning algorithms. If you are passionate about pushing the boundaries of AI, we invite you to shape the future of intelligent robotics.

What You’ll Be Doing

Develop and implement Vision‑Language‑Action models, generalist robot transformers, and imitation learning algorithms (e.g., diffusion policies) to enable robots to autonomously execute complex tasks

Design, test, and refine algorithms for real‑world autonomy and navigation with a focus on spatial reasoning and generalization

Streamline the data collection and training workflow to efficiently expand model capabilities with new tasks and data sources

Collaborate with the reinforcement learning team to innovate methods that leverage simulated and real‑world data

Optimize and distill networks for real‑time deployment on edge hardware (e.g., Nvidia Jetson Thor)

Build, lead, and mentor a high‑performance software engineering team

Provide expert guidance to product managers and executives for strategic decision‑making

Create and maintain documentation, guidelines, and best practices to streamline knowledge sharing

What You Must Have

Master’s degree or higher in Engineering, Robotics, or Machine Learning

Minimum three years of industry or research experience (PhD experience is a plus)

Strong deep learning fundamentals including supervised, self‑supervised learning, Transformer‑based architectures, policy optimization algorithms, imitation learning, and generative AI techniques (including Diffusion Models)

Proven experience developing Vision‑Language‑Action models or large‑scale generalist robot models (e.g., RT‑2, Octo)

Robust background in robotics, including autonomy and navigation

Experience deploying neural networks on hardware platforms

Proficiency in prototyping algorithms and training deep neural networks in Python (PyTorch)

Bonus Points

PhD in Robotics, Engineering, Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field, or equivalent research experience

Publications at top‑tier conferences

Experience managing a software team

Ability to write production‑level code in modern C++

We require in‑person presence in our office locations.

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