Machine Learning Intern
One Robot builds task-specific world models and an evaluation platform for robot manipulation policies.
Training end-to-end policies for robots is vibes-based today. Teams collect data, train, deploy on a real robot, find out what fails, collect more, retry. We replace the trial-and-error with rigorous validation that tells you where your policy will fail and what data to collect to fix it.
Robotics can't industrialize without an evaluation layer. We're building it.
We're based in San Francisco, backed by Accel, YC, several exited founders, and engineering leaders at leading AI companies. We're small and deliberately so — everyone owns a wide surface area and moves fast.
This internship is for people who want to work on real problems with real robots, not toy datasets. You'll embed directly with the technical team and contribute to active research across world models, policy training, and evaluation.
What you'll do:
Contribute to training runs: Work alongside founding engineers on world model or eval model experiments end-to-end
Run real-robot evaluations: Collect demonstration data, run policies on physical hardware, and document failure modes
Build tooling: Write Python and PyTorch code that improves our data engine, training pipelines, or eval infrastructure
Close the sim-to-real gap: Run experiments that test how well simulation predicts real-robot behavior
Requirements:
Strong coding in Python and PyTorch
Currently enrolled in a BS, MS, or PhD program in ML, robotics, computer vision, or a related field
Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning a generative model, VLM, or policy (coursework or research counts)
Ability to work in-person in San Francisco
Nice to have:
Experience with real robot hardware or simulation environments (Isaac, MuJoCo, etc.)
Prior research in manipulation, 3D vision, or model evaluation
Skills
As published by ashby · 10 questions · 5 written answers
Basics
Name, Email, Resume, Location
Short answers (3)
- Phone
- LinkedIn URL optional
- GitHub URL (if relevant to role) optional
Pick from a list (2)
- Are you legally authorized to work in [Country]? (Yes/No)
- Will you now or in the future require visa sponsorship? (Yes/No)
Written answers (5)
- Tell us about the hardest technical problem you worked on for a long time. What made it hard, what did you try, what worked, and what were the results?
- Tell us about a time you taught yourself something difficult. What did you learn, why was it hard, how did you learn it, and how did you use it?
- Convince us you’re gritty. Use a specific example.
- Why are you interested in this role? We prefer authentic answers over polished but generic ones.
- If you have an open-source contribution, publication, writeup, demo, or project you’re proud of, feel free to share it here. If it was group work, tell us what you personally did.