BOOK AN EVALUATION
Deplace AI is the deployment layer for Physical AI. We evaluate cutting-edge physical AI models from leading research labs and robotics companies on clients’ real-world tasks, and collect targeted data to enable rapid model improvement and iteration. We are a VC-funded, well-capitalized startup working at the intersection of Physical AI research and real-world robotics deployment.
We are looking for a Founding Engineer to help build our evaluation and data collection platform, working closely with our CTO and the core technical team. This is a hands-on role with significant ownership, where you will help define both the technical foundations and the product direction of the company.
  • Building and operating our data flywheel, from data collection to evaluation and feedback
  • Contributing to our core AI and robotics software stack
  • Designing and implementing evaluation frameworks for Physical AI models in both real-world and simulation settings
  • Setting up simulation environments based on client tasks, objects, constraints, and performance requirements
  • Supporting real-world deployments, including teleoperation and human-in-the-loop data collection and evaluations
  • Participating in robotics & AI events to showcase the platform (RSS 2025, etc)
  • Expanding offerings with additional solutions (synthetic data, human-in-the-loop, frontier data, etc)
  • Master’s degree (completed or in progress) in Computer Science, Data Science, Robotics, or a related field
  • Strong empirical research skills and solid technical intuition
  • Good understanding of machine learning and robotics fundamentals, including VLAs, robotic simulation, robot teleoperation, evaluation methods, and data for Physical AI
  • Entrepreneurial builder mindset, comfortable operating in uncharted territory and turning ambiguous problems into working systems
  • Availability of 40h a week or more
  • And finally, an incredible passion for robotics & AI and the desire to change the world with it
  • Contributions to robot learning or robotics research
  • Experience training or working with large-scale foundation models
  • Software engineering background
  • Internship or research experience in robotics and/or AI at a top organization (DeepMind, Nvidia, Dolby, Open AI, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, Google, Skild AI, Figure, Field AI, Scale, etc.)
  • Competitive base salary with meaningful equity participation
  • Direct collaboration with the founding team from day one
  • High-impact role with real ownership over technical and product decisions
  • Opportunity to help shape a company at the core of the Physical AI ecosystem
  • Position available in the United States & Europe (Paris, France)
San Francisco Bay Area · Full-time · ~6 months · Up to $6K/month
Everyone selling a robot has a polished demo and inflated metrics. Almost none have proven performance data from real industrial operations.

Today, buyers are forced to run months-long pilots with every vendor or choose whichever robot looks the best on a presentation.

Deplace is the deployment layer for Physical AI, based on evidence backed results. We deploy robots on real customer workflows, capture every trial, and continuously evaluate performance using AI-assisted, human-verified measurements, resulting in faster Physical AI development cycles and successful deployments.

We are a VC-funded, well-capitalized startup working at the intersection of Physical AI research and real-world robotics deployment.
In this role, you’ll be working with robot policies (like π, GR00T, and others from our partners) on multiple hardware platforms and stressing them on real customer task requirements. This requires being comfortable with the full robotics stack.

You will actively be involved in shaping the direction of the company and its products.
  • Own the full pipeline from data collection on real robots to policy training, evaluation, and deployment.
  • Actively detect breaking points, debug failures, and model them into insights and data.
  • Build data collection tooling for teleoperated demonstrations, apply imitation learning, and process multimodal data.
  • Write production-quality code that is traceable, reproducible and modular.
  • Brainstorm with us as we grow the company. Helping drive strategy is worth more than closing tickets.
  • You have worked on training, evaluating, and deploying a manipulation policy on hardware.
  • Strong foundation in Python, ROS, machine learning, and robotics fundamentals: manipulation, perception, and controls.
  • A deployed system, publication, thesis or a personal/open-source project. A flagship you can speak about for hours.
  • High agency. Ability to break down problems and make autonomous decisions, and know when to seek guidance.
Ideal candidates should have 3+.
  • Hands-on deployment and operation of bimanual arms, humanoids, or mobile manipulators
  • Experience with teleoperation rigs and demonstration collection at volume
  • Familiarity with USD scenes and Gaussian splatting for creating sim-ready environments in Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, ManiSkill, or similar
  • Experience with multimodal datasets, LeRobot, or comparable tooling
  • Owned a large subsystem through FIRST Robotics, BattleBots, Formula Student, or a comparable project.
  • Statistical or mathematical background and prior work on theoretical foundations
  • Publications or presentations at top outlets like ICRA, CVPR, IROS, CoRL, or similar
  • Location: San Francisco Bay Area (mostly on-site). The robots are here.
  • Duration: ~6 months, with flexible timings. Co-op and academic-term arrangements are welcome, with the possibility of a full-time offer based on performance.
  • Start: As soon as possible (ideally between Sep-Oct)
  • Scope: Personalized for candidate. High end-to-end ownership of a core project, with a lot of breadth.
apply here
San Francisco Bay Area · Part/Full-time · ~3 months
Everyone selling a robot has a polished demo and inflated metrics. Almost none have proven performance data from real industrial operations.

Today, buyers are forced to run months-long pilots with every vendor or choose whichever robot looks the best on a presentation.

Deplace is the deployment layer for Physical AI, based on evidence backed results. We deploy robots on real customer workflows, capture every trial, and continuously evaluate performance using AI-assisted, human-verified measurements, resulting in faster Physical AI development cycles and successful deployments.

We are a VC-funded, well-capitalized startup working at the intersection of Physical AI research and real-world robotics deployment.
This is an open ended systems and data role with one high-ownership project and a lot of breadth beyond it. You will be developing custom tools and standardized setups that make our tech stack and data flow more efficient.

Beyond that, you will be collaborating with the team on our annotation pipelines, fine-tuning VLA models, processing multimodal data, and the cloud infrastructure underneath it all
  • Designing and deploying camera rigs: mounting, calibration, and drift detection that stay reliable in unpredictable, real-world environments.
  • Automating data ingestion, sync, and validation with frame-level fault detection and quality monitoring.
  • Extending the annotation pipeline to reduce reliance on manual labeling.
  • Writing production-quality code that is traceable, reproducible and modular.
  • Brainstorming with us as we grow the company. Helping drive strategy is worth more than closing tickets.
  • Strong foundation in Python and perception fundamentals: cameras, calibration, and signal processing.
  • Familiarity with robot hardware, and the ability to debug failures through hardware-in-the-loop testing.
  • A deployed system, publication, thesis or a personal/open-source project. A flagship you can speak about for hours.
  • High agency. Ability to break down problems and make autonomous decisions, and know when to seek guidance.
Ideal candidates should have 3+.
  • Experience with multi-camera calibration or sensor fusion
  • You’ve used OpenCV, GStreamer, FFmpeg, or similar video tooling in a project
  • Built data feeding pipelines for VLM/VLA models
  • Comfortable with cloud infrastructure: storage, compute, deployment
  • Familiarity with multimodal datasets, LeRobot, or comparable tooling
  • Owned a large subsystem through FIRST Robotics, BattleBots, Formula Student, or a comparable project
  • Experience with agentic workflows and token/inference optimization
  • Location: San Francisco Bay Area (hybrid). With the possibility of remote work.
  • Duration: ~3 months with flexible timings.
  • Start: As soon as possible (ideally between Sep-Oct)
  • Compensation: Based on the profile
  • Scope: Personalized for candidate. High ownership of a project, with a lot of breadth.
apply here
plugins premium WordPress