Research Associate (Robot Learning & Manipulation)

SHARE@NTU Corporate Laboratory focuses on the development of key technologies for humanoid robotics, aimed at enabling intelligent services, industrial assistance, and human-centric applications. The research areas include multimodal sensing, artificial intelligence, environmental perception and situational awareness, as well as real-time motion planning and decision-making, allowing humanoid robots to operate safely and efficiently in complex and dynamic environments. Through the development of advanced humanoid robotic platforms, SHARE@NTU Lab seeks to address the growing global demand for automation while cultivating the next generation of local talent in robotics, artificial intelligence, and intelligent sensing technologies. Our Lab aims to hire a Research Associate with strong robotics learning background to help develop and improve our visuomotor manipulation policies, with a heavy emphasis on real-robot deployment.

Key Responsibilities

Design, train, evaluate, and deploy learning-based visuomotor policies for humanoid robot manipulation

Develop manipulation behaviors such as grasping, pick-and-place, object reorientation, door opening, bimanual manipulation, and basic assembly

Apply and extend techniques including behavior cloning, reinforcement learning, and VLA reasoning

Train models that are robust to real-world challenges such as sensor noise, partial observability, contact dynamics, and environment variability

Own the full pipeline from data collection on real robots to model training, evaluation, and deployment

Work closely with simulation and digital twin tooling where useful, while prioritizing real-world performance and transfer

Collaborate with perception, controls, systems, and hardware teams to integrate policies into a full autonomy stack

Evaluate tradeoffs between learning-based and classical approaches and make principled design decisions

Write high-quality, well-tested software that ships to and runs reliably on physical humanoid robots

Partner with integration and testing teams to continuously improve robustness, performance, and deployment velocity

Job Requirements

Master in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field

Hands-on experience developing and deploying robot learning systems on real robots

Strong background in robot manipulation and visuomotor control

Experience with behavior cloning, reinforcement learning, or related learning-based manipulation methods

Proficiency in Python and/or C++ for robotics and ML systems

Experience with modern deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch)

Ability to design experiments, analyze failures, and iterate quickly in real-world robotic systems

Solid understanding of the tradeoffs between classical robotics approaches and learning-based methods

Thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where solutions require exploration and ownership

Bonus Qualifications

Experience deploying learning-based manipulation systems in commercial or production robotic systems

Prior work on humanoids or highly dexterous robotic platforms

Publication record in robot learning, manipulation, or embodied AI

Experience leading projects or mentoring other engineers

Passion for building autonomous humanoid robots that operate in the real world

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Hiring Institution

NTU A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, established jointly with Imperial College London. NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N). Ranked amongst the world’s top universities by QS, NTU has also been named the world’s top young university for the past seven years. The University’s main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) buildings, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district. Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources.

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