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# Machine Learning Scientist - Early Scale-Up

- **Company:** Understanding Recruitment
- **Location:** Greater London, UK
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, High-Level Architecture, Machine Learning, Robotic Automation Software, Deep Learning, Data Strategy
- **Published:** September 9, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.understandingrecruitment.com/job/machine-learning-scientist---early-scale-up/

## About the Role

* Strong research background in ML, robotics or computer vision
 * Deep understanding of modern deep learning
 * Experience training and evaluating ML models
 * Excellent mathematical and experimental instincts
 * Ability to form hypotheses and design rigorous experiments
 * Curiosity for genuinely unsolved research problems

## Description

Machine Learning Research Scientist

Help define the research agenda for Physical AI from day one.

We're hiring a Founding Research Scientist for an ambitious UK startup building the models that will enable robots to understand, learn and act in the real world.

You'll tackle open-ended research across robot learning, vision-language-action models and world models - developing new ideas, testing them on real robotic systems and turning promising research into working technology.

What you'll do

 * Lead research across robot learning, VLAs and world models
 * Develop new model architectures, training methods and data strategies
 * Explore how models can generalise across tasks, environments and embodiments
 * Take ideas from papers and first principles to real-world robotic experiments
 * Help define the company's long-term research direction
 * Publish meaningful research

What we're looking for

 * Strong research background in ML, robotics or computer vision
 * Deep understanding of modern deep learning
 * Experience training and evaluating ML models
 * Excellent mathematical and experimental instincts
 * Ability to form hypotheses and design rigorous experiments
 * Curiosity for genuinely unsolved research problems

Why join?

 * Founding role + significant equity
 * Define the research agenda from the ground up
 * Work at the frontier of Physical AI
 * Experiment on real robotic hardware
 * Small, highly technical founding team
 * Genuine research freedom and ownership


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