Research Technical Program Manager, Robotics
Dyna Robotics (embodied-AI general-purpose robots) is hiring a Research Technical Program Manager in Redwood City to coordinate its robotics research portfolio: tracking projects, assessing results with researchers, and partnering with the Chief Research Officer on research strategy, priorities, and resourcing. Requires deep robotics research expertise and cross-team program coordination.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Redwood City, CA
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Project management
- Posted
Must have
- Strong research background in robotics (original research, publications, or substantial industry research contributions)
- Deep expertise in one or more areas such as robot learning, manipulation, perception, planning, control, embodied AI, or autonomous systems
- Ability to engage deeply with technical work: questioning assumptions, interpreting experimental results, sound judgment beyond own specialty
- Experience coordinating complex research efforts across multiple researchers, teams, or disciplines
- Strategic thinking: connecting individual projects to broader research goals and articulating implications of choices
- Comfort with ambiguity and changing evidence, adapting plans as research evolves
- Clear communication, strong organization, ability to build trust and influence across teams
Nice to have
- PhD in robotics, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or related field, or equivalent research experience
- Experience working with senior research leadership on portfolio planning and technical prioritization
- Hands-on experience with physical robotic systems, including experimentation, evaluation, and deployment
- Track record of connecting research efforts to produce stronger shared outcomes
Full description
Dyna Robotics builds general-purpose robots powered by a proprietary embodied AI foundation model with top-in-industry generalization and real-world performance. Already deployed with customers across multiple industries, our robots do commercial-grade work in the physical world. Our team comes from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Cruise, and we're backed by CRV, First Round, and other leading investors.
About the role
We’re looking for a Research Technical Program Manager with a strong research background in robotics to help guide and coordinate our research portfolio.
You’ll be the person who knows where our research stands: what each team is pursuing, what the evidence shows, how projects relate to one another, and where decisions or support are needed. Working closely with the Chief Research Officer, you’ll turn that understanding into clear priorities, sound technical judgments, and an actionable research strategy.
The role calls for scientific depth, good judgment, and the ability to help teams keep making progress through the uncertainty inherent in research.
What you’ll do
- Maintain a complete view of the portfolio. Track each project’s objectives, hypotheses, results, milestones, risks, and upcoming decisions.
- Assess progress with researchers. Evaluate the strength of results, separate meaningful advances from open questions, and surface technical bottlenecks early.
- Connect work across teams. Spot shared challenges, dependencies, and complementary approaches, and find opportunities to bring separate projects together.
- Partner with the Chief Research Officer on strategy. Synthesize findings, develop recommendations, and support decisions on research direction, priorities, resourcing, and new opportunities.
- Turn strategy into research plans. Help teams define tractable questions, useful evaluation criteria, and milestones that reflect both scientific uncertainty and organizational goals.
- Drive decisions and follow-through. Lead research reviews, clarify tradeoffs, document decisions, and make sure every team has clear ownership and next steps.
- Keep leadership informed. Deliver concise, evidence-based updates that give an accurate picture of progress and show where leadership’s attention is needed.
- Bridge research and application. Work with engineering and product teams to identify when promising findings are ready for further development and what validation remains.
What you’ll bring
- A strong research background in robotics, shown through original research, publications, or substantial contributions in an industry research setting.