Senior Machine Learning Engineer – VLA

{
  "content_hash": "d7076eea5f38358c2a3870c0fb04748f454a7c79a7d5dc80fd764ae51c7ad6d0",
  "source_hash": "50c8eacb92a2917c65f2f53eba76eb724aa80ad7770d1641b1d087f63968e9db",
  "last_changed_at": "2026-06-06T08:44:54.831Z",
  "active_status": "active"
}

{
  "language": "en-us",
  "location": {
    "raw": "San Jose, CA, United States",
    "city": "San Jose",
    "region": "CA",
    "country": "United States",
    "is_remote": false,
    "confidence": 0.98,
    "workplace_type": "on_site"
  },
  "salary_max": 200000,
  "salary_min": 150000,
  "inferred_at": "2026-06-06T08:44:54.829Z",
  "launch_scope": {
    "reason": "english_us_canada",
    "included": true,
    "language": "en-us",
    "location": {
      "raw": "San Jose, CA, United States",
      "city": "San Jose",
      "region": "CA",
      "country": "United States",
      "is_remote": false,
      "confidence": 0.98,
      "workplace_type": "on_site"
    },
    "countries": [
      "United States"
    ]
  },
  "remote_policy": null,
  "salary_period": "year",
  "workplace_type": "on_site",
  "salary_currency": "USD"
}

{}

{
  "list_job": {
    "id": "8d5bab70-e012-42df-aedd-a76c0bb82728",
    "url": "https://ats.rippling.com/bonsairoboticsmain/jobs/8d5bab70-e012-42df-aedd-a76c0bb82728",
    "name": "Senior Machine Learning Engineer – VLA",
    "language": "en-US",
    "locations": [
      {
        "city": "San Jose",
        "name": "San Jose, CA",
        "state": "California",
        "country": "United States",
        "stateCode": "CA",
        "countryCode": "US",
        "workplaceType": "ON_SITE"
      }
    ],
    "department": {
      "name": "Software Engineering"
    }
  },
  "detail_job": {
    "url": "https://ats.rippling.com/bonsairoboticsmain/jobs/8d5bab70-e012-42df-aedd-a76c0bb82728",
    "name": "Senior Machine Learning Engineer – VLA",
    "uuid": "8d5bab70-e012-42df-aedd-a76c0bb82728",
    "board": {
      "logo": {
        "url": "https://prod-images.rippling.com/b4640cb64019427442ddfa9e76d73a503573de99.png?Expires=1780821894&Signature=zq54MwbXtMgLpahNAqEHqsgTv5-~P7l~N1~tKDw-f6CeOjw3tFsW0nc2f3qilFNpUaRpSMCbYo97GdwKaUxyX~naKt9igzXRyUWhxuVtPIOQSed3YPhKh6CHGF7U-yDfCF5Yhe5Fp3XuKIWCFelIHi4v4fWDlDJohN0n6pqBQNTU3URhF5IbnqX-zGOdW64r6YyUtAN-nh08G1PvbYiwwvB7KCdJPJef0Tc-VY7QBflXh9oJmvTmSaBlVaT4iBJj5JLGLK2y10sdgAzgvzFV~BsMx-UpIMKByyLfXykC8jNPK-i5FwSAGr3fEh4L9-wauRWv6rWDLS3U0OtfQhx4Pw__&Key-Pair-Id=K2Y26R2ZPP26PH",
        "name": "bonsai_stack_color.png",
        "type": "image/png"
      },
      "slug": "bonsairoboticsmain",
      "title": "Bonsai Robotics Careers",
      "banner": {
        "url": null,
        "name": "",
        "type": ""
      },
      "boardURL": "https://ats.rippling.com/bonsairoboticsmain/jobs",
      "fontType": null,
      "subtitle": "All of Bonsai Robotics' current open roles",
      "boardType": "RIPPLING",
      "linkColor": "#000000",
      "buttonColor": "#9f7f4f",
      "legalNotice": null,
      "buttonTextColor": "#ffffff",
      "noOpeningsMessage": null,
      "groupJobsByLocation": false,
      "showBoardLogoOnJobPost": false,
      "showCompanyInfoUnderJobPost": false
    },
    "createdOn": "2026-03-26T19:05:44.143000-07:00",
    "department": {
      "name": "Software Engineering",
      "base_department": "Software Engineering",
      "department_tree": [
        "Software Engineering"
      ]
    },
    "companyName": "Bonsai Robotics",
    "description": {
      "role": "<meta><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><b><strong style=\"font-size:18pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">About the role</strong></b></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">We're looking for a Machine Learning Engineer who can own the full lifecycle of training and deploying end-to-end Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for outdoor autonomy. You'll build the models that allow any vehicle—from our Amiga platform to heavy off-road equipment—to navigate, act, and adapt in unstructured outdoor environments using raw sensor inputs (cameras, IMU, GPS, LiDAR, and more). We have collected a large dataset of heavy equipment working in the field from deployments and are looking for people who can leverage massive real-world data as well as data from targeted data collection to train a VLA model. This is a high-impact, end-to-end role: you'll touch everything from data pipelines and model architecture to real-world deployment on edge hardware.</span></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><b><strong style=\"font-size:18pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">What you'll do</strong></b></p><ul data-pattern=\"discCircleSquare\" data-depth=\"1\" style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;margin:8px 0px;line-height:1.6;padding:0px 0px 0px 32px;list-style-type:disc;\"><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Design, train, and iterate on VLA and other learned behavior policy architectures for vehicle control in diverse outdoor environments</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Build and maintain robust data pipelines—ingestion, curation, labeling, and versioning—to support reproducible, high-quality training at scale</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Develop evaluation frameworks: offline metrics, simulation-based testing, and real-world field validation loops</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Optimize models for deployment on edge compute (NVIDIA Jetson and similar), addressing latency, memory, and throughput constraints</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Collaborate closely with perception, controls, platform, and field operations teams to integrate learned policies into our full autonomy stack</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Instrument and monitor deployed models in production, diagnosing failure modes and feeding insights back into the training loop</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;--listitem-marker-color:#000000;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Stay current with the rapidly evolving landscape of foundation models for robotics and bring new ideas from research into practice</span></li></ul><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><b><strong style=\"font-size:18pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Qualifications</strong></b></p><ul data-pattern=\"discCircleSquare\" data-depth=\"1\" style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;margin:8px 0px;line-height:1.6;padding:0px 0px 0px 32px;list-style-type:disc;\"><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">3+ years applying deep learning to real-world robotics or embodied AI problems using PyTorch, JAX, Ray, or similar frameworks</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">3+ years building, deploying, and maintaining ML models in production—not just research prototypes</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Strong practical experience with behavior cloning, reinforcement learning, or other data-driven control approaches</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Familiarity with multimodal model architectures (vision-language models, VLAs, or similar)</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Comfort working across the stack: data infrastructure, model training, optimization, and on-device deployment</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;--listitem-marker-color:#000000;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Experience working with real sensor data (camera, IMU, GPS, LiDAR) in noisy, unstructured environments</span></li></ul><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><b><strong style=\"font-size:18pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Bonus Points For</strong></b></p><ul data-pattern=\"discCircleSquare\" data-depth=\"1\" style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;margin:8px 0px;line-height:1.6;padding:0px 0px 0px 32px;list-style-type:disc;\"><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Experience with flow-matching policies, action-chunking transformers, or other recent advances in learned manipulation/navigation policies</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Hands-on work with TensorRT, ONNX, or other model optimization toolchains for edge deployment</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Published work at ICRA, IROS, CoRL, CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML, or similar venues</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Experience with ROS2 or robotics middleware in production systems</span></li><li style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;--listitem-marker-color:#000000;margin:3px 0px;letter-spacing:0.25px;line-height:1.6;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Background in agriculture, construction, mining, or other outdoor/off-road domains</span></li></ul><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Bonsai Robotics is building the future of outdoor autonomy. If you want to ship models that drive real machines in real fields—not just run on a cluster—we'd love to hear from you.</span></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;text-align:start;\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Bonsai Robotics is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other legally protected status.</span></p>",
      "company": "<meta><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><b><strong style=\"font-size:18pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">About Bonsai Robotics</strong></b></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap;\">Bonsai Robotics develops affordable, vision-based autonomy that makes off-road equipment smarter, safer, and more productive. We are redefining outdoor autonomy with Bonsai Intelligence, a connected platform that's inspired by biology to see, think, and act with precision like a human. We bring together advanced perception, embodied AI, integrations with equipment manufacturers, and our compact, modular Amiga vehicles to deliver reliable automation to the world's most demanding field operations—reducing costs and increasing operational efficiencies.</span></p><p style=\"font-family:&quot;Basel Grotesk&quot;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:0.25px;margin:4px 0px;padding:0px;\"><br></p>"
    },
    "workLocations": [
      "San Jose, CA"
    ],
    "employmentType": {
      "id": "Salaried, full-time",
      "label": "SALARIED_FT"
    },
    "payRangeDetails": [
      {
        "currency": "USD",
        "isRemote": false,
        "location": "San Jose, CA",
        "rangeEnd": 200000,
        "frequency": "YEAR",
        "rangeStart": 150000
      }
    ],
    "activeJobApplication": {
      "basicQuestions": [
        {
          "oid": "first_name",
          "title": "First name",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "last_name",
          "title": "Last name",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "email",
          "title": "Email",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "pronouns",
          "title": "Pronouns",
          "required": false,
          "fieldType": "PRONOUN"
        },
        {
          "oid": "current_company",
          "title": "Current company",
          "required": false,
          "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "phone_number",
          "title": "Phone number",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "PHONE_NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "location",
          "title": "Location (city only)",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
        },
        {
          "oid": "resume",
          "title": "Resume",
          "required": true,
          "fieldType": "FILE"
        },
        {
          "oid": "cover_letter",
          "title": "Cover letter",
          "required": false,
          "fieldType": "FILE"
        }
      ],
      "customQuestions": {
        "fields": [
          {
            "oid": "first_name",
            "title": "First name",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "last_name",
            "title": "Last name",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "email",
            "title": "Email",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "pronouns",
            "title": "Pronouns",
            "required": false,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "PRONOUN"
          },
          {
            "oid": "current_company",
            "title": "Current company",
            "required": false,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "phone_number",
            "title": "Phone number",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "PHONE_NUMBER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "location",
            "title": "Location (city only)",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "SHORT_ANSWER"
          },
          {
            "oid": "resume",
            "title": "Resume",
            "required": true,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "FILE"
          },
          {
            "oid": "cover_letter",
            "title": "Cover letter",
            "required": false,
            "fieldData": {},
            "fieldType": "FILE"
          }
        ]
      },
      "additionalQuestions": null
    },
    "hasAIEvaluationsEnabled": false,
    "eeocQuestionnaireEnabled": true,
    "applicationConfirmationTemplate": "65207b0236caba8f1bad8fe4",
    "eeocQuestionnaireEnabledForJobPost": true
  },
  "detail_meta": {
    "url": "https://ats.rippling.com/api/v2/board/bonsairoboticsmain/jobs/8d5bab70-e012-42df-aedd-a76c0bb82728",
    "http_status": 200,
    "content_type": "application/json",
    "response_bytes": 14809
  },
  "detail_errors": []
}