Lead Humanoid Robotics System Architect - United States
$220,920 - $361,480 USD yearly
Originally posted 29 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role involves serving as a systems architect for humanoid robots, owning the end-to-end hierarchical stack. It focuses on the co-optimization of large vision-language-action (VLA) models with compute silicon under tight power, thermal, latency, and memory-bandwidth constraints.
What you'll do
- Own the hierarchical control stack, including VLM/VLA systems, visuomotor policies, and distributed joint FOC loops.
- Define hierarchical multi-system architecture requirements and select interconnect topologies like EtherCAT.
- Drive co-optimization of large VLA/world models with compute silicon by defining quantization, sparsity/MoE, and context lengths.
- Perform first-principles sizing of FLOPs, sustained TOPS, and memory-bandwidth floors.
- Author and maintain primary system-level specifications for compute, power, thermal, sensors, and actuator networks.
- Lead multi-disciplinary architecture reviews and subsystem design trades across ML research, controls, electrical, firmware, and mechanical teams.
What you'll need
- 10+ years in complex cyber-physical systems.
- 4-5 years specializing in robotics, autonomous systems, or high-performance edge AI platforms.
- BS in Engineering, Computer Science, Math, or a related field.
- Proven ownership of architectures bridging high-level AI models with real-time hardware control.
- Deep fluency in transformer inference constraints (quantization, action chunking, memory bandwidth walls) and real-time distributed systems (EtherCAT, zonal sensor pods, safety islands).
Nice to have
- Direct experience with humanoid robots/mobile manipulators.
- Hands-on exposure to VLA/foundation models (e.g., -series, Helix-class, GR00T, OpenVLA).
- Expertise with robotics platforms (NVIDIA Jetson / IGX platforms, custom AI silicon).
- Experience with battery/thermal budgeting for highly constrained systems.
Skills: humanoid robotics, VLA models, compute silicon, system architecture, memory-bandwidth, EtherCAT
This role has been open 25 days — well below the 68-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
514
|
Median days open
68 d
|
Median salary
$232k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Intel Corporation | All employers we track in this specialty (514 roles · 75 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 9 | 514 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 159 | 5948 · 143 employers |
| Median days open | 21 d | 68 d (−47 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $232k |
Skills observed across this category: humanoid robotics, VLA models, compute silicon, system architecture, memory-bandwidth, EtherCAT
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 106 open roles · median 101 d
- NVIDIA · 84 open roles · median 63 d
- AMD · 46 open roles · median 61 d
- Micron Technology · 33 open roles · median 43 d
- Mobileye · 21 open roles · median 57 d
- Analog Devices · 14 open roles · median 26 d
How we counted: 514 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 75 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 23 Sept 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.