Member of Technical Staff (Robotics)

Job Description: Member of Technical Staff (Robotics)

Location: San Francisco, CA (on-site, 5 days a week, in our San Francisco office)

About Artificial Analysis

Artificial Analysis is the leading independent AI benchmarking company. We support labs, engineers and enterprises to understand AI capabilities and make critical decisions about their AI strategies. We are the go-to authority for understanding AI, from AI labs and enterprises to media, investors, and policymakers. Our benchmarks don't just measure the cutting edge of AI, they are actively shaping the frontier.

Our benchmarks and analysis are trusted by hundreds of thousands of users and are the go-to reference for leading AI labs including OpenAI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA and Anthropic, and major publications including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Financial Times and The Economist.

We are a team of 40+, on track to triple by year end, backed by Nat Friedman (Github, Meta), Daniel Gross (SSI), Andrew Ng (Google Brain, DeepLearning.ai , Amazon), Adam D'Angelo (Quora, Poe, OpenAI), Clem Delangue (Hugging Face) and other industry leaders.

The Opportunity

Our benchmarks and analysis are what the industry turns to when they need to understand AI capabilities, from AI labs and enterprises to media, investors, and policymakers. Robotics is a new vertical for Artificial Analysis: we're initiating coverage of AI-driven robotics and hiring a Member of Technical Staff to lead it.

We are very excited about the coming wave of fast progress as AI gets smart enough to drive robots. Vision-language-action models are now generalizing across embodiments, tasks, and environments, world models are becoming the substrate for training and evaluating robot policies at scale, and scaling laws are showing up in robotics the way they did in language and vision - the bottleneck is data, not ideas. The field has no shortage of impressive demos, but results are mostly self-reported and there is almost no rigorous, independent measurement - exactly the gap Artificial Analysis exists to fill.

You'll define how Artificial Analysis evaluates robotics: developing our benchmarking methodologies from the ground up, producing the leaderboards and analysis the industry will use to understand what robots can actually do, and building relationships with some of the most important robotics labs and AI companies in the world. The bar for success is becoming a world expert in physical AI.

This is a unique combination of product, research, technical, and client-facing work, suited to highly driven technical generalists who thrive on breadth and ownership. As the lead of a new vertical, you'll have an unusual amount of both, with the scope to shape what our robotics coverage becomes. You'll work directly with our founders and across the full team. AI scaling is going to change the physical world in ways we don't yet understand - and we're offering a front row seat.

What You’ll Do

• Lead Our Initiation of Coverage: Take our robotics coverage from zero to launched, defining the methodologies, benchmarks, and leaderboards that will anchor the new vertical, and own the roadmap from there

• Robotics Benchmarking Product Development: Structure, design and execute projects to evaluate VLAs, world models, and full robotic systems, including developing new evaluation methodologies and datasets that establish our robotics benchmarking capabilities

• Strategic Analysis of Robotics: Drive developing reports and data visualizations to communicate complex robotics concepts to enterprises looking to shape their AI and robotics strategy

• Partner with Leading Robotics Companies: Collaborate with the labs building robot foundation models and the companies building robots to support them in benchmarking their technologies. This also requires identifying opportunities to enhance our leading AI benchmarking platform and working with our developers to make it happen

• Become AI-Native: Embrace an AI-native workflow, using cutting-edge AI tools to generate leverage in a fast-changing industry and maintain our competitive edge in AI benchmarking

• Company Strategy: We are a startup and are looking for the future leaders of Artificial Analysis. Team members will be expected to contribute to company strategy and should expect to drive large initiatives that will support us in being the leading AI benchmarking company

What We’re Looking For

You have an intense interest in AI and robotics, a genuine desire to become a world expert at their intersection, and strong analytical and coding skills to back it up.

We expect the strongest candidates for this role to come from one of three backgrounds. You should clearly fit one of these profiles:

1. Robotics and Embodied AI - backgrounds include Robotics Engineer, Research Scientist, ML Engineer, or similar roles working on robot learning at robotics companies (e.g. Physical Intelligence, Figure, Generalist AI, Skild AI, 1X, Tesla, Boston Dynamics) or the robotics teams of major AI labs and chipmakers (e.g. Google DeepMind, NVIDIA). You have hands-on experience with modern robot learning - VLAs, world models, cross-embodiment training, sim-to-real - and understand how robot foundation models work at a technical level. You're looking for a role with more breadth and industry exposure than a pure research or engineering position, where you can combine technical depth with client-facing work and strategic analysis.

2. AI and Machine Learning - backgrounds include ML Engineer, ML Researcher, AI Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Technical PM, Solutions Engineer, or similar roles at AI companies or AI-focused teams. You have hands-on experience with modern AI systems and understand how models work at a technical level. You haven't necessarily worked on robots, but you follow the robot foundation model space closely and want to make embodied AI your specialty.

3. Strategy Consulting - backgrounds include Management Consultant, Associate, Engagement Manager, Data Scientist, or similar roles at firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or equivalent. You know how to structure ambiguous problems, build analytical frameworks, and communicate findings to senior stakeholders. The key differentiator: you have a genuine technical interest in robotics and ability to code - you follow the field closely, you have opinions on where the technology is heading, and you want to be closer to the subject matter than consulting allows.

Across all three profiles, we require:

• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills

• Proficiency in Python and data analysis

• Genuine, demonstrable interest and knowledge of frontier AI and robotics - we want people who have informed opinions about where the field is heading, not just people who watch the demos

Why Artificial Analysis?

• Shape how AI gets built: The leading AI labs track our benchmarks and use them to guide their development priorities. Your work will directly influence the direction of AI.

• Become a world expert in AI: You will evaluate every major model, across every major capability, as they are released. Very few roles offer this breadth of exposure to frontier AI.

• Work with the most important players in AI: You'll manage relationships with teams at the leading AI labs and major enterprises as a trusted, independent voice.

• Join at a defining moment: We're 40+ people and fast growing, backed by some of the most connected investors in AI. The people who join now will shape the product, the team, and the strategy as we scale.

• Competitive compensation including equity

• Our team is split across San Francisco, CA & Melbourne, Australia