AI & Control Senior Engineer – Manipulation

Version française de l’offre disponible sous demande.

Wandercraft is strengthening its Manipulation team to tackle challenging industrial use cases with Calvin, our humanoid robot.

We are looking for a senior engineer with strong expertise in robotic manipulation to help us push the state of the art and turn advanced approaches — from model-based control to imitation learning and diffusion policies — into robust capabilities on real robots.

The role combines research, hands-on experimentation, and integration, with a strong focus on solving real-world manipulation problems.

Reporting to the Head of Manipulataion within the AI & Control department, the AI & Control Senior Engineer will be in charge of (non-exhaustive list):

• Conducting literature reviews, particularly in robotic manipulation

• Presenting the latest research advances and internally developed algorithms to the team

• Developing manipulation algorithms and training policies

• Testing algorithms on real robots and in simulation

• Studying use-cases and proposing technical solutions

• Improving simulator realism and comparing different simulation environments

• Developing automated tests, improving code quality, and designing verification pipelines to prevent regressions

• Participating to the product design by explaining hardware requirements related to manipulation (required speeds, sensing, computing, …)

• Demonstrating tasks and collecting demonstrations for learning experiments

• Traveling to customer factories to validate use cases in real-world conditions and troubleshoot issues when necessary

Preferred experience

• Diploma: Engineering degree or equivalent Master’s degree required, PhD in a relevant field is very appreciated

• Required experience:

At least 5 years of experience in robotics or machine learning, including experience in robotic manipulation.

Academic or research experience is highly valued, particularly in robotics, optimal control, imitation learning, or diffusion models.

Ideally, you have experience managing datasets over time, including dataset storage, corrections, augmentation, usability, tooling, and continuous integration.

You are creative and innovative, and comfortable in developing new solutions with little existing infrastructure and rapidly building prototypes. Personal or professional robotics projects are highly valued.

You enjoy experimental work and adapting algorithms to the constraints of real-world environments and commercial products.

You have experience with collaborative software development practices, including modular design, test-driven development, and continuous integration.

You are comfortable working with linear algebra and matrix computations, kinematics, and physical modeling, including coordinate transformations and velocity computations. You also have strong software development experience in Python and C++.

You are rigorous, able to review your own work, and can clearly explain your calculations and algorithms.

You are curious and analytical, able to stay up to date with new technologies and learn effectively from scientific literature and interactions with the research community at conferences and other events.

• Required skills:

• Python - Expert level

• C++ - Autonomous level

• Machine learning - Expert level

• Imitation learning and diffusion models - Trainer level

• Robotics and control systems - Expert level

• Linear algebra, matrices computations, numerical optimization - Autonomous level

• Computer vision - Autonomous level

• Software engineering best practices, collaborative software design, continuous integration, automated testing - Autonomous level