Senior Robotics Engineer / Postdoctoral Researcher 60-100%

We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher or senior robotics engineer. Take humanoid and quadruped robots out of the lab and into industry: with Swiss partners, you deploy reinforcement learning, robot foundation models and agentic systems in the real world.

School: School of Engineering Starting date: January 2027 or by appointment.

Your role

You conduct applied research and development as a senior robotics engineer / postdoctoral researcher in the Embodied Mobile Agents (EMA) research group, deploying reinforcement learning and VLA/WAM policies on humanoid and quadruped robots in the real world. You drive our current focus topics: flexible industrial automation through agentic embodied AI systems, robotic foundation models and reinforcement learning for mobile manipulation. In a new project, we will be looking into lowering the entry barrier to robot teleoperation and imitation learning for non-technical users through automated dataset curation and real-time feedback. You turn results into publications and open-source code contributions. You collaborate with companies, universities and other partners in Switzerland and the EU. Most of our projects are applied research and innovation projects with Swiss companies, mainly funded by Innosuisse.

Your profile

• You hold a PhD in robotics, or in computer science or a related field with a focus on AI for robotics.
• You are a pragmatic "maker" with a strong drive to build things that work and are appealing to use, and you have hands-on experience with real robots, including prototyping and modifying robots with off-the-shelf equipment.
• You have proven competencies in robot learning (reinforcement learning, imitation learning, robot foundation models) and in classical robotics (motion planning, perception and navigation, teleoperation).
• You are a strong programmer and work confidently with ROS / ROS 2, Nav2, MoveIt, PCL, OpenCV, the NVIDIA Jetson ecosystem and current deep learning frameworks.
• You have a strong research track record in AI for robotics or computer vision, shown by publications, and your curiosity keeps you on top of the state of the art.
• You are fluent in English; German is a plus.

We offer a position at the level of research associate, initially limited to 2 years.

What you can expect

We offer working conditions and terms of employment commensurate with higher education institutions and actively promote personal development for staff in leadership and non-leadership positions. A detailed description of advantages and benefits can be found at Working at the ZHAW . The main points are listed below:

• Workplace Culture
• Work Life Balance
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Personal Development
• Environmental, Economic and Social Sustainability at the ZHAW
• Occupational Health Management
• Salary and Pension Provision

ZHAW is committed to gender-mixed and diverse teams in order to promote equality, diversity and innovation. We are looking for a witty, sharp, curious, and technically skilled personality. We value potential over formally certified skills, encouraging also unconventional CVs, e.g., transdisciplinary backgrounds or own entrepreneurial experience. Please honor us with a tailored cover letter and highlight facts that underline your ability to achieve high. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Contact

Dr. Jorge Peña Queralta Head of the Embodied Mobile Agents Research Group penq@zhaw.ch

Samy Shalaby Recruiting Manager samy.shalaby@zhaw.ch