Centific
Lead Research Scientist – Vision AI, Simulation & Physical AI
Centific, Seattle, Washington, us, 98127
Lead Research Scientist – Vision AI, Simulation & Physical AI
Be among the first 25 applicants.
Base pay range:
$150,000.00/yr - $160,000.00/yr
About the Team Centific’s
Robotics and Physical AI Lab
is pioneering the fusion of
simulation-first research ,
embodied intelligence , and
multimodal perception .
Our mission: accelerate the transition from
vision and language understanding
to
real-world action , enabling next‑generation robots, agents, and safety systems across industries.
We’re assembling a cross‑functional team of engineers, researchers, and interns exploring
vision‑language models (VLMs) ,
world models , and
sim2real transfer .
As our
Lead Research Scientist , you will steer this effort—bridging academic rigor with hands‑on experimentation, guiding early‑stage researchers, and converting scientific breakthroughs into deployable AI systems.
Drive the scientific and technical direction of Centific’s
Physical AI and Robotics R&D .
Lead by example—mentoring a team of interns and engineers while collaborating across simulation, perception, and multimodal AI.
What You’ll Do
Lead a team of 3–5 Ph.D. interns and engineers across perception, multimodal reasoning, and simulation projects.
Architect and maintain a collaborative research roadmap with measurable milestones and publishable outcomes.
Foster a culture of open research, reproducibility, and iterative learning.
Research & Development
Define and execute high-impact research in
embodied AI ,
world models , and
vision‑language reasoning .
Integrate
digital twins, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo , or other simulators for real-world policy validation and sim2real adaptation.
Advance
multimodal model design —from grounding and affordance recognition to causal and temporal reasoning.
Explore
data-efficient training ,
spatially aware neural architectures , and
robustness evaluation frameworks .
System Integration & Deployment
Collaborate with platform engineers to deploy research artifacts into scalable services using
Ray, FastAPI, Docker, and Kubernetes .
Benchmark large-scale inference pipelines, model distillation strategies, and safety validation workflows.
Publish open-source code and internal benchmarks that raise the scientific bar.
Partner with the Principal Architect, simulation teams, and external research collaborators.
Lead proof-of-concept integrations with simulation or robotics hardware vendors.
Represent Centific in academic conferences and consortiums on AI, simulation, and robotics.
Qualifications
Ph.D. in
Computer Science, Robotics, or related field , with a strong publication record in
CVPR/ICCV/ECCV, NeurIPS/ICLR/CoRL/RSS , or equivalent.
5+ years of postdoctoral or industry research experience in
computer vision, simulation, multimodal reasoning, or spatial AI .
Deep expertise in
PyTorch or JAX ,
GPU-accelerated workloads , and
distributed training .
Proven record of
mentoring junior researchers
or leading interdisciplinary R&D projects.
Experience with
Isaac Sim, Open3D, PyTorch3D, or MuJoCo
for digital-twin and behavior simulation.
Strong understanding of
statistical spatial modeling ,
RL/MPC policy learning , and
world-model architectures .
Preferred Qualifications
Publications or patents in
spatially-aware neural networks ,
multimodal world modeling , or
simulation-based training .
Experience implementing
Ray-based distributed training
or
Triton/TensorRT-based inference optimizations .
Familiarity with
trustworthy AI ,
explainability in autonomous systems , or
safety validation for robotics .
Contributions to open-source frameworks (e.g.,
OpenMMLab, Isaac Sim assets, Habitat, Omniverse pipelines ).
History of
academic collaboration
or joint research programs with universities or labs.
What Success Looks Like
Delivery of
reproducible, publishable, and deployable
research outcomes that strengthen Centific’s Physical AI IP portfolio.
Mentorship that grows the capabilities and confidence of your team.
Leadership that balances
curiosity-driven research
with
product-driven execution .
Demonstrable impact on simulation realism, policy robustness, and model generalization.
Multimodal AI
CLIP, SAM, LLaVA, Cosmos-Reason, Vision-Language Transformers
Lead the frontier:
Shape a new discipline at the intersection of AI, simulation, and robotics.
Mentor the next generation:
Guide emerging researchers working on cutting-edge multimodal and embodied AI problems.
Ship your science:
See your research power real systems across safety, healthcare, and smart environments.
Collaborate with industry leaders:
Work with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the global Physical AI community.
Centific is an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.
Seniority level Mid‑Senior level
Employment type Full‑time
Job function Information Technology
Industries Software Development
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Base pay range:
$150,000.00/yr - $160,000.00/yr
About the Team Centific’s
Robotics and Physical AI Lab
is pioneering the fusion of
simulation-first research ,
embodied intelligence , and
multimodal perception .
Our mission: accelerate the transition from
vision and language understanding
to
real-world action , enabling next‑generation robots, agents, and safety systems across industries.
We’re assembling a cross‑functional team of engineers, researchers, and interns exploring
vision‑language models (VLMs) ,
world models , and
sim2real transfer .
As our
Lead Research Scientist , you will steer this effort—bridging academic rigor with hands‑on experimentation, guiding early‑stage researchers, and converting scientific breakthroughs into deployable AI systems.
Drive the scientific and technical direction of Centific’s
Physical AI and Robotics R&D .
Lead by example—mentoring a team of interns and engineers while collaborating across simulation, perception, and multimodal AI.
What You’ll Do
Lead a team of 3–5 Ph.D. interns and engineers across perception, multimodal reasoning, and simulation projects.
Architect and maintain a collaborative research roadmap with measurable milestones and publishable outcomes.
Foster a culture of open research, reproducibility, and iterative learning.
Research & Development
Define and execute high-impact research in
embodied AI ,
world models , and
vision‑language reasoning .
Integrate
digital twins, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo , or other simulators for real-world policy validation and sim2real adaptation.
Advance
multimodal model design —from grounding and affordance recognition to causal and temporal reasoning.
Explore
data-efficient training ,
spatially aware neural architectures , and
robustness evaluation frameworks .
System Integration & Deployment
Collaborate with platform engineers to deploy research artifacts into scalable services using
Ray, FastAPI, Docker, and Kubernetes .
Benchmark large-scale inference pipelines, model distillation strategies, and safety validation workflows.
Publish open-source code and internal benchmarks that raise the scientific bar.
Partner with the Principal Architect, simulation teams, and external research collaborators.
Lead proof-of-concept integrations with simulation or robotics hardware vendors.
Represent Centific in academic conferences and consortiums on AI, simulation, and robotics.
Qualifications
Ph.D. in
Computer Science, Robotics, or related field , with a strong publication record in
CVPR/ICCV/ECCV, NeurIPS/ICLR/CoRL/RSS , or equivalent.
5+ years of postdoctoral or industry research experience in
computer vision, simulation, multimodal reasoning, or spatial AI .
Deep expertise in
PyTorch or JAX ,
GPU-accelerated workloads , and
distributed training .
Proven record of
mentoring junior researchers
or leading interdisciplinary R&D projects.
Experience with
Isaac Sim, Open3D, PyTorch3D, or MuJoCo
for digital-twin and behavior simulation.
Strong understanding of
statistical spatial modeling ,
RL/MPC policy learning , and
world-model architectures .
Preferred Qualifications
Publications or patents in
spatially-aware neural networks ,
multimodal world modeling , or
simulation-based training .
Experience implementing
Ray-based distributed training
or
Triton/TensorRT-based inference optimizations .
Familiarity with
trustworthy AI ,
explainability in autonomous systems , or
safety validation for robotics .
Contributions to open-source frameworks (e.g.,
OpenMMLab, Isaac Sim assets, Habitat, Omniverse pipelines ).
History of
academic collaboration
or joint research programs with universities or labs.
What Success Looks Like
Delivery of
reproducible, publishable, and deployable
research outcomes that strengthen Centific’s Physical AI IP portfolio.
Mentorship that grows the capabilities and confidence of your team.
Leadership that balances
curiosity-driven research
with
product-driven execution .
Demonstrable impact on simulation realism, policy robustness, and model generalization.
Multimodal AI
CLIP, SAM, LLaVA, Cosmos-Reason, Vision-Language Transformers
Lead the frontier:
Shape a new discipline at the intersection of AI, simulation, and robotics.
Mentor the next generation:
Guide emerging researchers working on cutting-edge multimodal and embodied AI problems.
Ship your science:
See your research power real systems across safety, healthcare, and smart environments.
Collaborate with industry leaders:
Work with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the global Physical AI community.
Centific is an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.
Seniority level Mid‑Senior level
Employment type Full‑time
Job function Information Technology
Industries Software Development
#J-18808-Ljbffr