Helix AI Engineer, Modeling
Figure is an AI robotics company developing autonomous general-purpose humanoid robots. Our goal is to build embodied AI systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the real world. Figure is headquartered in San Jose, CA, and this role requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration.
Our Helix team is responsible for developing the core AI systems that power humanoid autonomy. We are looking for a Helix AI Engineer, Modeling to design and advance the core model architectures and learning approaches that enable perception, reasoning, and action in embodied systems.
This role focuses on developing new modeling approaches across vision, language, and action—spanning representation learning, multimodal fusion, and model capabilities that directly impact robot intelligence.
Responsibilities
Design and develop model architectures for perception, reasoning, and action across multimodal inputs (e.g., vision, language, proprioception)
Build models that learn structured representations of the world, including objects, dynamics, and interactions
Advance multimodal learning approaches, including fusion, alignment, and cross-modal reasoning
Improve model capabilities in areas such as generalization, robustness, and long-horizon reasoning
Work across the model lifecycle, from initial research and prototyping to training and deployment
Collaborate closely with pretraining, video, generative, RL, and robot learning teams to integrate modeling advances into the full autonomy stack
Design experiments and evaluation frameworks to understand model behavior and guide iteration
Contribute to the development of new modeling paradigms for embodied AI systems
Requirements
Experience designing and training deep learning models for vision, language, or multimodal systems
Strong understanding of modern model architectures (e.g., transformers and related approaches)
Experience improving model performance through architectural innovation and experimentation
Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch
Strong experimental rigor and ability to iterate on model design and performance
Solid software engineering skills and ability to build reliable, maintainable systems
Ability to operate independently and drive ambiguous, high-impact technical problems
Bonus Qualifications
Experience with multimodal models (vision-language or vision-language-action systems)
Background in representation learning, world models, or structured prediction
Experience working on frontier models at companies such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, or xAI
Familiarity with embodied AI, robotics, or real-world ML systems
Experience with large-scale training or distributed systems
Publication record in machine learning, computer vision, NLP, or multimodal AI
The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $200,000 - $400,000
The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.