Human Computer Lab

Human Computer Lab is a research lab building character robots that feel alive and responsive. Our first robot, LeLamp, explores a new category of consumer robotics where everyday objects become interactive and help us reshape our attachment to technology.Our goal is to push the frontier of human-robot interaction by making technology more legible, emotionally intuitive, and human-centered. We are building the foundation for a new generation of robots designed for everyday environments.What to expectWe're looking for an inventor who builds. Someone who gets an unlikely idea on a weekend, tries it, watches it fail, notices something surprising in the wreckage, and follows that instead - all the way to a model, a dataset, a working robot, and a write-up anyone can reproduce. Research is the inventing half: finding the question nobody has asked, trying the unexpected method first, and building the evaluation that tells you the truth. Engineering is the making half: turning the idea into something that runs on a real robot, in a real home, fast enough that a person never notices the machinery. Most people are strong at one. This role is for the person who can't stop doing both. It isn't bound to one discipline - the problem might be expressive motion this month, sensing or thermals next quarter, an inference stack or a new robot body after that. You'll work directly with the CEO and founding team, with real room to explore, on problems that ship to people's homes.In this role, you will:<ul><li>Pick open problems across the system - motion, perception, sensing, actuation, thermals, inference, tooling - and take them from first idea to working artifact.</li><li>Try the unlikely approach before the obvious one, kill it honestly when it fails, and use what the failure taught you.</li><li>Build the evaluation before you trust the result: the metric, the probe, and the side-by-side that catch what averages hide.</li><li>Create data where none exists - bootstrap it, synthesize it, curate it with taste - and know when synthetic data is misleading you.</li><li>Ship end to end: the model, the dataset, the firmware, the demo, and the robot in the room. Make it fast and reliable enough for everyday life.</li><li>Work across abstraction layers when the problem demands it — from a circuit or motor driver up to a trained model and the interaction on top of it.</li><li>Write up what you tried, what failed, what the numbers say, and what you'd do next, so someone else can reproduce it.</li><li>Use AI as a research collaborator - to map a search space, run experiments, and pressure-test your own ideas - and share your judgment in how you use it for novel approaches.</li></ul>You may be a good fit if you:<ul><li>Have a body of self-directed work - projects, repositories, write-ups, videos, robots - that you started because you were curious, not because it was assigned. This matters more to us than any credential.</li><li>Have taken at least one idea from “what if” to a working, measured artifact, end to end.</li><li>Are fluent in Python and comfortable further down the stack - C/C++, embedded, or electronics — or have a record of learning a new layer when a problem required it.</li><li>Have trained, evaluated, and deployed ML models, and can reason about latency and compute on edge devices.</li><li>Have built real hardware - a robot, a device, an instrument, a sensor rig - from parts, not from a kit.</li><li>Can explain your failures as clearly as your successes.</li><li>Have a degree in engineering, computer science, physics, or a related field, or equivalent proof of work.</li><li>Have published research, open-source projects people actually use, or a public body of technical writing. A plus, not a requirement.</li></ul>You will be a strong fit, if you:<ul><li>Can't stop doing both halves — inventing the method and building the thing — and get restless doing only one.</li><li>Choose problems as carefully as you solve them, and can tell an interesting question from a merely difficult one.</li><li>Report what you found, not what you hoped. You'd rather say “it passed these checks” than “it's solved.”</li><li>Have taste. You care whether something feels alive and reads right to a person, not only whether the loss went down.</li><li>Move fast without being sloppy, and leave every result reproducible.</li><li>Care about what technology does to people - not just what it can do and want your inventions to change how people relate to the machines in their lives.</li></ul> The early team becomes the DNA of the company. We set ourselves and others to a high standard, and we respond with kindness when things get hard but keep everyone accountable. This requires us to be curious, creative, and diverse in our thinking and approach. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups often hold back unless they meet 100% of the criteria - we don’t want that to be the reason we miss out on great talent.

Research Engineer

Human Computer Lab is a research lab building character robots that feel alive and responsive. Our first robot, LeLamp, explores a new category of consumer robotics where everyday objects become interactive and help us reshape our attachment to technology.Our goal is to push the frontier of human-robot interaction by making technology more legible, emotionally intuitive, and human-centered. We are building the foundation for a new generation of robots designed for everyday environments.<h2>What to Expect</h2>We are looking for a hands-on Perception Engineer who can build the system that allows our robot to understand people and the world around it. You will work on developing computer vision and machine learning system at the core of the robot’s awareness, enabling it to recognize people, understand gestures, track attention, and respond naturally in real time. The liveliness of our robot will truly convey the character interface that we are building that can learn and adapt as required.This role sits at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and software engineering. You will work closely with the CEO and the founding team to develop perception capabilities from prototype to deployment, collecting data, training models, optimizing performance, and integrating the stack directly into the robot's behavior.<h2>In this Role, You Will:</h2><ul><li>Design, train, and deploy computer vision and perception models for person detection, tracking, pose estimation, gesture recognition, emotion recognition and scene understanding.</li><li>Develop data collection, labeling, and evaluation pipelines to improve model performance and reliability.</li><li>Build perception systems that operate robustly across varying lighting conditions, environments, and user behaviors.</li><li>Optimize models for real-time inference on edge hardware while balancing latency, accuracy, and power constraints.</li><li>Work with RGB cameras, depth sensors, IMUs, audio inputs, and other sensor modalities to create multi-modal perception systems.</li><li>Develop tools for dataset management, model evaluation, debugging, and monitoring.</li><li>Support integration between perception, behavior, controls, and firmware systems.</li><li>Stay updated with state-of-the-art research to develop architectures and techniques that can improve the robot’s ability to understand and interact with people.</li><li>Debug perception failures systematically and close the loop through data-driven improvements.</li><li>Help define and evolve the platform’s perception architecture as the robot grows in capability.</li></ul><h2>You May Be a Good Fit If You:</h2><ul><li>Have a degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, and a minimum of 3+ years of hands-on experience.</li><li>Are proficient in Python and comfortable working in C++ when required.</li><li>Have experience training and deploying machine learning models using frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX, or similar tools.</li><li>Have worked on computer vision problems such as object detection, tracking, pose estimation, segmentation, gesture recognition, or activity understanding.</li><li>Have experience deploying models to edge devices and optimizing performance for real-world systems.</li><li>Understand the challenges of collecting, labeling, and maintaining high-quality datasets.</li><li>Are comfortable working in environments where architecture is still evolving and your input shapes direction.</li><li>Document clearly and drive issues to resolution.</li></ul><h2>You Will Be a Strong Fit If You:</h2><ul><li>Care deeply about building perception systems that work reliably outside ideal lab conditions.</li><li>Have strong intuition for debugging machine learning systems and can distinguish between data problems, model problems, and deployment problems.</li><li>Enjoy converting cutting-edge research into practical systems that ship.</li><li>Think critically about tradeoffs between accuracy, latency, robustness, power consumption, and cost.</li><li>Have the ability to quickly adapt through iteration cycles without waiting for perfect information to make progress.</li><li>Take ownership over systems end-to-end, from data collection and training through deployment and monitoring.</li><li>Work well in small, collaborative teams where software, hardware, controls, and AI are in constant conversation.</li><li>Care about what perception enables: awareness, responsiveness, and the feeling that the robot is alive.</li></ul> The early team becomes the DNA of the company. We set ourselves and others to a high standard, and we respond with kindness when things get hard but keep everyone accountable. This requires us to be curious, creative, and diverse in our thinking and approach. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups often hold back unless they meet 100% of the criteria - we don’t want that to be the reason we miss out on great talent.

Perception Engineer

Human Computer Lab is a research lab building character robots that feel alive and responsive. Our first robot, LeLamp, explores a new category of consumer robotics where everyday objects become interactive and help us reshape our attachment to technology.Our goal is to push the frontier of human-robot interaction by making technology more legible, emotionally intuitive, and human-centered. We are building the foundation for a new generation of robots designed for everyday environments.What to expectAs an intern, you will be responsible for helping build the software and machine learning systems that power robot perception, intelligence, and behavior. You will work closely with the team to develop and deploy ML models, build real-time software systems, and integrate machine learning with robotic hardware — turning research and simulation into reliable, production-ready robotics software.In this role, you will:<ul><li>Develop software systems for robotic platforms that power robot perception, intelligence, and behavior</li><li>Build machine learning models for tasks such as computer vision, audio processing, and interaction understanding</li><li>Design and implement pipelines for training and deploying machine learning models</li><li>Integrate ML systems with robotic hardware and embedded systems</li><li>Improve robot perception, responsiveness, and behavioral intelligence</li><li>Collaborate with robotics engineers to build integrated robotic systems</li></ul>You may be a good fit if you:<ul><li>Are pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field</li><li>Have strong programming skills in Python and/or C++ as well as an understanding of algorithms and software engineering fundamentals.</li><li>Have experience with machine learning frameworks</li><li>Have experience in one or more of the following areas: computer vision, robotics, reinforcement learning, or multimodal AI</li><li>Have experience building and deploying machine learning systems preferably in Simulations (Issac Sim, MJLab, Mujoco, etc.)</li><li>Are comfortable jumping into unfamiliar systems and can create order through chaos.</li><li>Care about users and feel ownership over outcomes, even for systems you don't own.</li><li>Think holistically about systems and approach complex problems with creative, outside-the-box solutions.</li></ul>You will be a strong fit, if you:<ul><li>Are passionate about building intelligent physical systems.</li><li>Move quickly and work well in rapid iteration cycles.</li><li>Take ownership over the systems they design and build.</li><li>Are curious, resourceful, and motivated to solve difficult problems.</li><li>Work well in small, collaborative teams.</li><li>Consider not just what immediately works, but how consumers will engage with robots.</li></ul> The early team becomes the DNA of the company. We set ourselves and others to a high standard, and we respond with kindness when things get hard but keep everyone accountable. This requires us to be curious, creative, and diverse in our thinking and approach. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups often hold back unless they meet 100% of the criteria - we don’t want that to be the reason we miss out on great talent.

Intern - Software/ML Engineer

Human Computer Lab is a research lab building character robots that feel alive and responsive. Our first robot, LeLamp, explores a new category of consumer robotics where everyday objects become interactive and help us reshape our attachment to technology.Our goal is to push the frontier of human-robot interaction by making technology more legible, emotionally intuitive, and human-centered. We are building the foundation for a new generation of robots designed for everyday environments.What to expectThis role is for a machine learning engineer who wants to work on the models that give LeLamp its intelligence – the systems that let the robot perceive its environment, understand what's happening around it, and respond in ways that feel natural and intentional. You'll be developing and advancing the multimodal model architectures at the core of our robot, spanning vision, language, and action, and owning that work from early research through to deployment on real hardware. This is not a role where you train models in isolation and hand them off. You'll see your work running in the robot, shaping how it behaves in the world. You'll work closely with the research and mechanical team at the frontier of embodied AI, where the problems are genuinely open and the decisions you make directly shape what the robot can do. In this role, you will:<ul><li>Develop software systems for robotic platforms that power robot perception, intelligence, and behavior</li><li>Write maintainable, production quality code for research and deployment</li><li>Build multi-modal machine learning models for tasks such as computer vision, audio processing, and interaction understanding</li><li>Design and implement pipelines for training and deploying machine learning models</li><li>Integrate ML systems with robotic hardware and embedded systems</li><li>Improve robot perception, responsiveness, and behavioral intelligence</li><li>Collaborate with robotics engineers to build integrated robotic controls and architectures</li></ul>You may be a good fit, if you:<ul><li>3+ years (or equivalent) working on machine learning for robotics, controls, or perception</li><li>Have strong programming skills in Python and/or C++ and understanding of algorithms and software engineering fundamentals.</li><li>Have experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch</li><li>Have experience in one or more of the following areas: computer vision, robotics, reinforcement learning, or multimodal AI</li><li>Have experience building and deploying machine learning systems preferably in Simulations (Issac Sim, MJLab, Mujoco, etc.)</li><li>Show intentionality in design decisons and feel ownership over outcomes, even for systems you don't own.</li><li>Think holistically about the entire system and approach complex problems with creative, outside-the-box solutions.</li></ul>You will be a strong fit, if you:<ul><li>Absolutely love and are passionate about building intelligent physical systems.</li><li>Move quickly and can do rapid iteration cycles. Share work early and iterate.</li><li>Take ownership over the systems they design and build, and are curious, resourceful, and motivated to solve difficult problems.</li><li>Work well in small, collaborative teams.</li><li>Consider not just what immediately works, but how the consumer will engage with the robot.</li></ul> The early team becomes the DNA of the company. We set ourselves and others to a high standard, and we respond with kindness when things get hard but keep everyone accountable. This requires us to be curious, creative, and diverse in our thinking and approach. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups often hold back unless they meet 100% of the criteria - we don’t want that to be the reason we miss out on great talent.

Human Computer Lab

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Research Engineer

Perception Engineer

Intern - Software/ML Engineer

ML Engineer

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