AI Research Engineer - Scaling

AI Research Engineer, Scaling | Infrastructure

Location: Palo Alto, CA (on-site)

About 1X

We build humanoid robots that work alongside people to solve labor shortages and create abundance.

The Role

As a Research Engineer focused on Scaling, you will design and build robust infrastructure to support large-scale training, evaluation, and deployment across 1X’s fleet of robots. You will transform experimental systems into production-grade platforms optimized for throughput, latency, and performance across both datacenter and edge environments. Your work will be pivotal in enabling high-efficiency learning and inference, directly shaping the performance of our general-purpose humanoid robots.

You Will

• Own and lead scaling of distributed training and inference systems

• Ensure compute resources are optimized to make data the primary constraint

• Enable massive training runs (1000+ GPUs) using robot data, with robust fault tolerance, experiment tracking, and distributed operations

• Optimize inference throughput for datacenter use cases such as world models and diffusion engines

• Reduce latency and enhance performance for on-device robot policies using techniques such as quantization, scheduling, and distillation

Must Have

• Strong programming experience in Python and/or C++

• Deep intuitive understanding of training and inference speed bottlenecks and scaling laws

• A mindset aligned with extremely high scaling: belief that scale is foundational to enabling humanoid robotics

• Degree in Computer Science or a related field

• Experience with distributed training frameworks (e.g., TorchTitan, DeepSpeed, FSDP/ZeRO), multi-node debugging, and experiment management

• Proven skills in optimizing inference performance using graph compilers, batching/scheduling, and serving systems like TensorRT or equivalents

• Familiarity with quantization strategies (PTQ, QAT, INT8/FP8) and tools such as TensorRT and bitsandbytes

• Experience developing or tuning CUDA or Triton kernels with understanding of hardware-level optimization (vectorization, tensor cores, memory hierarchies)

Benefits & Compensation

• Salary Range: $180,000 – $300,000 + Equity

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k) with company match

• Paid time off and holidays

Equal Opportunity Employer

1X is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.