Research Scientist / Research Engineer (Intern)

Ultra builds practical, general-purpose robots focused on repetitive manipulation tasks.

Unlike traditional industrial automation that’s rigid and complex, our robots are zero integration—able to be installed in hours, not weeks—and are highly flexible, capable of quickly learning new tasks and delivering immediate ROI.

Founded by a team of three-time entrepreneurs with a decade of collaboration, Ultra moves fast and decisively. We already have robots in the field generating revenue and data, with plans to rapidly scale deployments this year.

Ultra builds industrial AI robots that are working in the real world today. Our robots automate mission-critical warehouse labor end-to-end, starting with e-commerce order packaging. We deploy fast, learn from real production data, and iterate aggressively. We already have a quickly growing number of revenue-generating robots operating in U.S. warehouses, and are now scaling towards thousands of deployments over the next few years. Our mission is simple: build the world's most useful and deployable robot.

WARNING: Robotics is not for the faint of heart. There are no silver bullets here. It is tiresome, unglamorous, and at times brutal work. The only way out is through, and the only way through is treacherous and unknown. Success will require teamwork - so we are building a world-class team to tackle some of the most exciting problems out there. We hope you join us.

We are looking for high-impact researchers and engineers to help bridge the gap between robot foundation models and production robot deployment. Speed and reliability are the two metrics that matter the most for industrial customers, yet most robot models struggle on both. You will post-train robot foundation models and do new research to hill climb task performance in our research lab and at real customer deployments.

• Improve our robots’ ability to quickly learn new tasks and to execute those tasks quickly and reliably
• Lead research efforts around improving our models’ robustness and performance for real world tasks
• Integrate trained models with our production robotics stack and work with deployment teams to scale models across real customer sites

• Have experience with fine-tuning large models for downstream tasks (IL, RL, etc.)
• Operate with high agency and are able to own significant research efforts end to end
• Care deeply about evaluation, benchmarking, and failure analysis
• A generalist who enjoys getting your hands dirty across the whole stack ML stack
• Passionate about seeing robots make an impact in the real world

• Experience applying ML to robotics, with hands-on robot experience
• MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

We’re building general-purpose robots that learn new tasks fast and deploy in hours, not weeks. Our stack combines real-time teleop, low-latency control, and neural network-based autonomy. We optimize end-to-end—from custom IK solvers and low-level drivers to vision-language-action models trained on production robot data. Stack: Python, C++, ROS2, PyTorch, simulation, real hardware. Problems: real-time control, robot learning, sim-to-real, scalable deployment.