Service Robot System Engineer
Applications: candidates may apply from outside Japan. Visa sponsorship: available. Japanese: Not required. English: Business level. Japan Dev tags: Engineering, Eng - Other.
Description
In this role, you will be responsible for:
- Designing service robot systems for real-world environments (e.g., homes, retail stores, and logistics sites).
- Planning and executing proof-of-concept (PoC) studies and field experiments in the service robotics domain.
- Selecting, improving, and iterating on robot hardware used in the project.
Requirements
Minimum Qualifications
- M.S. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
- Extensive hands-on experience with physical robotic platforms (e.g., mobile robots, manipulators such as UR5, Franka Emika, HSR, or humanoids).
- Demonstrated ability to control real robots using ROS / ROS2, including full-stack integration and deployment.
- Strong programming proficiency in C++ and Python, with the ability to contribute production-level code and perform system-level integration.
- Proven ability to work both independently and collaboratively in multidisciplinary research and engineering teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Ph.D. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or M.S. with 3+ years of equivalent industry or research experience.
- Publication record in top-tier robotics conferences or journals (RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, TRO, IJRR).
- Experience participating in and/or receiving awards at international robotics competitions (e.g., RoboCup@Home).
- Willingness to conduct real-world validation experiments by using service robots in everyday life environments (e.g., at home).
- Experience leading or contributing to large-scale robot data collection or fleet management systems.
- Familiarity with robotic simulators (Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or PyBullet) for training and evaluation.
- Experience integrating Sim2Real transfer or Vision–Language–Action (VLA) models onto real robotic systems.
Leadership & Other Qualifications
- Leadership experience mentoring junior engineers and influencing stakeholders.
- Ability to lead multidisciplinary engineering teams.
- Experience working on complex hardware systems such as automotive, consumer electronics, or similarly sophisticated products.
Benefits
There are currently no comparable projects in the world that collect data and develop foundation models on such a large scale. As mentioned above, this is one of Japan’s leading national projects, supported by a substantial investment of 20.5 billion yen from NEDO.
This position will play a crucial role in determining the success of the project. You will have broad discretion and responsibility, and we are confident that, if successful, you will gain both a great sense of achievement and the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to society.
Furthermore, we strongly encourage engineers to actively build their careers through this project—for example, by publishing research papers and engaging in academic activities.