Principal Applied Scientist, Mobile Manipulation Robotics

Amazon Robotics is revolutionizing warehouse automation at unprecedented scale. We are looking for a technical lead to own the whole-body planning, control, and optimization stack for the Phoenix mobile manipulation robot. In this role, you will design and ship motion planners and controllers that coordinate all of Phoenix's degrees of freedom (mobile base, torso, arm, and end-effector) as a single unified system, enabling smooth, safe, and production-ready autonomous manipulation in Amazon fulfillment environments.

You will architect whole-body motion planning pipelines (task-and-motion planning, trajectory optimization) that generate collision-free, time-efficient trajectories across the full kinematic chain. You will develop and tune real-time whole-body controllers, including QP-based and model-predictive approaches, and integrate them with the Foundry Controller mainline. A key part of the role is ensuring planner-generated trajectories are high-quality enough to train downstream foundation model policies (e.g., π0.5) at scale. You will also extend Phoenix's Control Barrier Function (CBF) safety architecture, guaranteeing constraint satisfaction from planning through execution.


About the team
Amazon Robotics develops and deploys advanced robotic systems that power Amazon's fulfillment centers worldwide. Our innovations in mobile manipulation, autonomous navigation, and human-robot collaboration are transforming how products move through our network, enabling faster delivery times while creating safer, more ergonomic work environments for our associates.