Research Engineer at Human Computer Lab | CA | Rezi

Research Engineer at Human Computer Lab

Research Engineer

Human Computer Lab · CA

4 weeks ago

Research Engineer

Human Computer Lab · CA

a month ago
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About the Role

Human Computer Lab is a research lab building character robots that feel alive and responsive. Our first robot, LeLamp, explores a new category of consumer robotics where everyday objects become interactive and help us reshape our attachment to technology. Our goal is to push the frontier of human-robot interaction by making technology more legible, emotionally intuitive, and human-centered. We are building the foundation for a new generation of robots designed for everyday environments.

Responsibilities

  • Pick open problems across the system - motion, perception, sensing, actuation, thermals, inference, tooling - and take them from first idea to working artifact.
  • Try the unlikely approach before the obvious one, kill it honestly when it fails, and use what the failure taught you.
  • Build the evaluation before you trust the result: the metric, the probe, and the side-by-side that catch what averages hide.
  • Create data where none exists - bootstrap it, synthesize it, curate it with taste - and know when synthetic data is misleading you.
  • Ship end to end: the model, the dataset, the firmware, the demo, and the robot in the room. Make it fast and reliable enough for everyday life.
  • Work across abstraction layers when the problem demands it — from a circuit or motor driver up to a trained model and the interaction on top of it.
  • Write up what you tried, what failed, what the numbers say, and what you'd do next, so someone else can reproduce it.
  • Use AI as a research collaborator - to map a search space, run experiments, and pressure-test your own ideas - and share your judgment in how you use it for novel approaches.

Requirements

  • Have a body of self-directed work - projects, repositories, write-ups, videos, robots - that you started because you were curious, not because it was assigned.
  • Have taken at least one idea from “what if” to a working, measured artifact, end to end.
  • Are fluent in Python and comfortable further down the stack - C/C++, embedded, or electronics — or have a record of learning a new layer when a problem required it.
  • Have trained, evaluated, and deployed ML models, and can reason about latency and compute on edge devices.
  • Have built real hardware - a robot, a device, an instrument, a sensor rig - from parts, not from a kit.
  • Can explain your failures as clearly as your successes.
  • Have published research, open-source projects people actually use, or a public body of technical writing.
  • Can't stop doing both halves — inventing the method and building the thing — and get restless doing only one.
  • Choose problems as carefully as you solve them, and can tell an interesting question from a merely difficult one.
  • Report what you found, not what you hoped. You'd rather say “it passed these checks” than “it's solved.”
  • Have taste. You care whether something feels alive and reads right to a person, not only whether the loss went down.
  • Move fast without being sloppy, and leave every result reproducible.
  • Care about what technology does to people - not just what it can do and want your inventions to change how people relate to the machines in their lives.

Skills

  • Python
  • C/C++
  • Embedded systems
  • Electronics
  • ML model training
  • ML model evaluation
  • ML model deployment
  • Edge device compute
  • Edge device latency
  • Hardware building
  • AI as a research collaborator

Location

  • Remote

Work Type

  • Full-time

Experience Level

  • Mid-level
  • Senior

Education Level

  • Degree in engineering, computer science, physics, or a related field, or equivalent proof of work.

About the Company

  • The early team becomes the DNA of the company. We set ourselves and others to a high standard, and we respond with kindness when things get hard but keep everyone accountable. This requires us to be curious, creative, and diverse in our thinking and approach.

Equal Opportunity

  • We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups often hold back unless they meet 100% of the criteria - we don’t want that to be the reason we miss out on great talent.