You'll lead research that proves what actually makes robots better, then ensure it gets built. As a founding member of Sovrano's research team, you'll spend roughly 80% of your time on research—training policies, designing benchmarks, and publishing results—and 20% coordinating with clients, robotics partners, and the data team. You'll own the research infrastructure that connects real-world expertise to robot learning, answering questions like what data a policy needs, how to judge its quality, and how to prove the gain.

What You'll Do

• Train and fine-tune policies on Sovrano's datasets, then measure the performance lift to prove the data works.
• Design benchmarks that accurately evaluate how well a policy performs on real-world robotic tasks.
• Select and execute the right training method for each research question, end to end.
• Shape Sovrano's direction by deciding which tasks, embodiments, and quality standards to prioritize.
• Publish findings at top venues, release open-source work, and communicate results to researchers, operations leads, and clients.

What We're Looking For

• A PhD in robotics or machine learning (completed or near completion), or an equivalent research record demonstrated through first-author publications or research roles at robotics or AI labs.
• Hands-on experience training and evaluating robot policies in simulation or on real hardware, including imitation learning, reinforcement learning, vision-language models, or dexterous manipulation.
• A track record of moving fast: running experiments early, writing up findings promptly, and reporting negative results.
• Ability to explain technical results clearly to researchers, operations leads, and non-technical clients.
• Daily fluency with AI tools and coding agents.
• Professional English and willingness to work on-site in Barcelona or relocate there.
• Publications at top venues, experience with real robot hardware, or familiarity with large-scale robotics datasets and data pipelines are strong signals.

Compensation & Benefits

Competitive salary plus equity. Relocation support available.

Location

On-site in Barcelona, Spain.