Applied Researcher

Physical Intelligence is hiring an Applied Researcher in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Physical Intelligence.

Level's read on this job

Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this role: the job is building AI systems.
The posting mentions fine tuning among its tools and skills.
Physical Intelligence has 43 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

fine-tuning

Who We Are

Physical Intelligence is bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world. We are a group of engineers, scientists, roboticists, and company builders developing foundation models and learning algorithms to power the robots of today and the physically-actuated devices of the future.

The Team

The Deployments team is responsible for solving real world problems with our models and robots. We tackle the full problem space: integrating with customer workflows, training models to solve their dexterous tasks, and ensuring the on-site reliability of the system. This breadth of problem space is why we’re a full-stack robotics team - whether it’s thinking about customer facing experiences or fine-tuning models for tasks no robot has done before, we put forth the best solution Pi has to offer.

In This Role You Will

- Deploy and debug learned policies on physical robots, diagnosing failures across the full stack (perception, policy, control, hardware).

- Train and tune policies, curate data, and iterate to improve real-world performance.

- Write production-quality code that interfaces with Pi’s infrastructure.

- Work with operators to set up tests, evals, and data collection pipelines.

- Engage with partners to understand use cases and observe robots in deployment contexts.

- Bridge research and operations: translate research advances into deployable systems, and surface real-world failure modes back to researchers and (software and hardware!) engineers.

- Define and shape a vision for what real-world deployments will look like in the long-term

What We Hope You’ll Bring

- Hands-on experience deploying robots or autonomous systems in real-world environments

- Strong engineering skills: clean Python, ability to interface with infrastructure, debugging instincts

- Ability to debug the full stack from perception to control

- Practical mindset: motivated by making things work, not by open-ended research

- Clear communication with researchers, operators, and occasionally partners

Bonus Points If You Have

- Founded or worked at an early-stage robotics or AV company

- PhD in relevant field

- Intuition for policy training, neural network debugging, and data curation

- Experience with robot manipulation platforms

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

How we rate this

Applied Researcher at Physical Intelligence rates 89 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Applied Researcher is an open job at Physical Intelligence.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The role is based in San Francisco.
The job was posted on January 23, 2026.
Applications are handled by Physical Intelligence. Apply on Physical Intelligence

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Fine-tuning

Questions you could be asked

Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Fine-tuning. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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