AI Engineer, Whole Body Controls, Optimus

Tesla’s Whole Body Controls team is seeking an AI Engineer for Optimus to develop whole-body motion policy models that support walking, balancing, disturbance recovery, and object manipulation on real hardware. The role focuses on modeling across the training lifecycle, from pre-training through reinforcement learning, including architecture selection, training recipes, and data representations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and iterate on network architectures for whole-body motion policies, world models, and learned dynamics models
• Build, tune, and scale training recipes, including losses, curricula, optimization strategies, and end-to-end pre-training to reinforcement learning pipelines
• Create robust data pipelines and data engines that supply model training at scale
• Develop evaluation benchmarks to support fast and iterative model improvement
• Enhance the robustness of learned policies and support deployment on Optimus

Required Qualifications

• Python proficiency (numpy, pytorch)
• Deep learning fundamentals, including architectures, optimization, training dynamics, and representation learning
• Proficiency with modern network architectures such as transformers and sequence models, including the ability to design and adapt them
• Experience training neural networks in PyTorch, including large-scale or distributed training
• Experience building robust data pipelines and data engines for large-scale model training

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing novel architectures or training recipes that shipped to production
• Exposure to world models, imitation learning, or reinforcement learning
• Any robotics, control, or multimodal-sensing exposure
• Equivalent experience through projects, research, or coursework is acceptable

Technologies

• Python
• numpy
• pytorch
• PyTorch
• transformers
• sequence models

Compensation

Expected Compensation: $176,000 - $420,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits. Pay may vary based on individualized factors, and the total compensation package may include additional elements depending on the position offered.

Benefits

• Medical plans with options that include $0 payroll deduction and healthcare coverage at day 1 of hire
• Family-building benefits, including fertility, adoption, and surrogacy
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans with options that include $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• 401(k) with employer match
• Employee Stock Purchase Plans
• Other financial benefits
• Company-paid Basic Life and AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance with a 90 day waiting period
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, accrued hours for Hourly positions) and paid holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits including critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft and legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program

Equal Opportunity and Accommodations

Tesla is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, gender identity, or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.

Tesla is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you need an accommodation at any point during the interview process.