Data Lead, Robotics

About the Team

Our mission is to expand the capabilities of foundational models to support general-purpose robotics in dynamic, real-world environments, ensuring reliable and safe operation. These capabilities include, but are not limited to, action generation, motion planning, world modeling, and real-time communication through voice and emotions.

We work across the entire robotics stack, integrating cutting-edge hardware, sensors, end-effectors, and models to explore a diverse range of robotic form factors. Our goal is to develop models that provide state-of-the-art intelligence combined with seamless physical skills under the practical constraints of robotic platforms.

We are looking for a talented Robotics Data Lead who can set the strategic direction for scaling robotics data in quantity, quality, and fidelity. This role is crucial for tightening the feedback loop between model evaluation and data collection. You'll collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams—including software, hardware, research, and operations—to drive significant advancements in our robotic systems.

• Create and lead the execution of the overarching strategy for robotics data collection.

• Create and refine real-world and simulated environments, tasks, and scenarios to develop comprehensive learning curricula for model training.

• Design and build tools to validate and ensure the quality and diversity of robotics datasets.

• Diagnose and resolve performance issues in deployed robotic models, recommending solutions that integrate across the entire robotics stack.

• Explore and implement innovative techniques for gathering real-world datasets.

• Collaborate effectively with modeling, hardware, and operations teams to maintain and enhance the diversity and quality of collected data.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Are excited to engage deeply with all aspects of the robotics data collection pipeline—hardware, operator behavior, task design—and approach problems with holistic, system-level thinking.

• Have prior experience leading robotics data collection and teleoperation projects.

• Are passionate about uncovering insights from large, heterogeneous datasets.

• Have experience developing efficient workflows that leverage distributed computing clusters to process large-scale, time-series, multimodal datasets.

• Keep up-to-date with recent advancements and research in robot learning and data collection.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 4 days a week.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement .

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link .

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation

$380K – $460K + Offers Equity