Director of Engineering, Physical AI
Scale AISan Francisco, California, United States · Posted 1 month agoDescription
Director of Engineering, Physical AI
Role Overview
The Director of Engineering will report to the General Manager of Physical AI, and will be responsible for leading a multi-disciplinary engineering organization. In this senior leadership role, you will own the execution of the Physical AI Data Engine — the platform powering the next generation of Physical AI/Embodied AI. You will collaborate closely with Operations and GTM to guide product direction and help solve the data bottleneck that stands between today's robotics research and real-world deployment.
This role requires significant ownership in a fast-paced environment and you will motivate internal teams to set the pace for business growth. Travel will come into play.
Key Responsibilities:
- Set and drive the technical vision across data collection infrastructure, teleoperation systems, ML training pipelines, model evaluation frameworks, annotation tooling, and research
- Lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization—spanning engineering managers, software engineers, ML engineers, and ML research scientists—while designing the organizational structure, talent strategy, and culture required to scale rapidly without compromising on quality or strategic alignment
- Maintain exceptional technical and operational excellence by deeply understanding team deliverables, asking incisive questions, identifying slipping standards early, and knowing precisely when to step in
- Drive cross-functional alignment across Engineering, Operations, and GTM on platform architecture, release processes, and shared priorities
- Collaborate with researchers and clients to architect and deliver scalable, production-grade data infrastructure tailored for complex robotics workloads
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related technical field
- 8+ years of engineering experience in fast-paced environments, including 4+ years direct people management demonstrated history of recruiting, mentoring, and developing high-performing technical teams through rapid growth and change
- Experience leading technical execution for complex hardware-software systems, with deep domain knowledge in Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, Computer Vision, and/or Machine Learning strongly preferred
- Deep fluency in the ML development lifecycle — training pipelines, data flywheels, and evaluation frameworks as systems you've built and owned
- Comfortable leading teams across Python, C++, and TypeScript/Node stacks, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes), and workflow orchestration (Temporal, Airflow)
- Proven ability to independently navigate, execute effectively amidst ambiguity, and strong attention to detail
- Strong operator and communicator to create tight feedback loops between teams, surface problems early, and drive decisions with clarity across technical and executive audiences
Nice to Have
- MS or PhD is a plus, though strong practical experience is equally valued.
- Hands-on experience with teleoperation systems (ALOHA, UMI, hand tracking), robotic hardware platforms, or imitation learning
- Background in sensor fusion, SLAM, or 3D data processing
- Experience scaling data collection systems globally
Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.
PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.
About Us:
At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.
We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.
We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.
We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.
PLEASE NOTE: We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants’ needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal data. Please see our privacy policy for additional information.
Similar jobs
Est. 307,800 USD
Role Overview The Director of Product Management, Physical AI will report to the General Manager of Physical AI, and will be responsible for defining the long-term strategy and business positioning of our frontier data p…
Est. 151,200 USD
Scale's Robotics business is rapidly expanding, supporting customers building physical AI. This position will be a key contributor in supporting data collection production in our San Francisco Robotics Lab and prototypin…
Est. 203,400 USD
Scale AI is the data engine for the entire AI industry. Our mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications by providing organizations with the high-quality data they need. The Physical AI team at Scale is fo…
Est. 190,000 USD
Scale’s Robotics business unit is experiencing historic, unprecedented growth. As a Senior Strategic Project Lead (SPL) for Egocentric Data Collection, you will architect and execute the critical operational roadmaps tha…
Est. 151,200 USD
At Scale, we believe that the next frontier of artificial intelligence is embodied. The Physical AI team is focused on building general AI that can reason and act in the physical world. By leveraging Scale’s massive, ind…
Software Engineer Argentina; Uruguay Software Engineer - Robotics & Autonomous Systems Scale's Robotics business unit is dedicated to solving the data bottleneck in Physical AI across Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, a…
Est. 320,850 USD
About Scale AI Scale’s mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions. We work with leading enterprises to bring generative AI safely into production—powering real-world impact through…
Est. 255,600 USD
About Scale Scale’s mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions. As the leading AI data foundry, we provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world’s…
Est. 151,200 USD
At Scale, we believe that the next frontier of artificial intelligence is embodied. The Physical AI team is focused on building general AI that can reason and act in the physical world. By leveraging Scale’s massive, ind…
Est. 201,825 USD
About Scale At Scale AI, our mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications. For 8 years, Scale has been the leading AI data foundry, helping fuel the most exciting advancements in AI, including: generative…
Est. 205,200 USD
Join the team shaping the future of AI at Scale. Scale builds RL environments: sandboxed replicas of the digital spheres where real knowledge work occurs and built from the operating data of the companies that actually h…
Est. 243,225 USD
About Scale At Scale AI, our mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications. For 8 years, Scale has been the leading AI data foundry, helping fuel the most exciting advancements in AI, including: generative…
Est. 215,000 USD
Scale AI is seeking a highly skilled and motivated AI Data Engineer to join our dynamic Federal Engineering team. As a part of this team, you will play a critical role in supporting Scale’s government customers by scopin…
Est. 209,700 USD
Scale AI is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Software Engineer to join our dynamic Public Sector Engineering team. As a part of this team, you will play a critical role in supporting Scale’s government customers by…
Est. 202,500 USD
Scale plays a critical role in powering the next generation of AI applications across the enterprise. As our customer base grows exponentially, Principal Solutions Engineers operate as senior technical leaders on the fro…
Est. 243,000 USD
Scale AI’s Public Sector business is growing quickly as government agencies adopt AI to support critical national security, defense, and public sector missions. We’re looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a…
Est. 202,500 USD
Software is eating the world, but AI is eating software. We live in unprecedented times – AI has the potential to exponentially augment human intelligence. Every person will have a personal tutor, coach, assistant, perso…
Est. 202,500 USD
Scale GP is Scale's enterprise Generative AI platform—APIs and infrastructure for knowledge retrieval, inference, evaluation, and intelligent automation. We power mission-critical workflows for leading enterprises, helpi…
Est. 203,400 USD
As a Technical Program Manager, you will partner with our Frontier Agent Engineering teams on enterprise customer engagements — owning operational execution and delivery of our technical work by managing timelines, miles…
Est. 203,550 USD
As a Field Engineer on our federal AI projects, you'll work directly with our largest public sector customers to make sure their experience with Scale's technology is smooth and successful. You'll help these customers bu…
Est. 283,500 USD
About Scale AI Scale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy reliable production AI applications. We partner with leading enterprises and government organizations to accelerate their AI i…
Est. 90,000 USD
The Business Development Representative, Partnerships, Physical AI will report to the Strategic Partnerships Manager and will be responsible for identifying, sourcing, and qualifying new partnership opportunities across…
Est. 216,900 USD
The shift from traditional software to AI is one of the most important transitions of our time, and the frontier AI labs driving it depend on Scale to do it. As an Engagement Management Lead on Scale's Generative AI team…
Est. 237,600 USD
As a Technical Program Manager for the Platform team, you will partner with engineering teams to directly accelerate the development and maturity of the Scale Generative AI Platform (SGP). We are looking for a TPM who ha…
Est. 283,500 USD
Our Generative AI Data Engine powers the world’s most advanced LLMs and generative models through world-class RLHF (Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback), human data generation, model evaluation, safety, and alignm…
Est. 283,500 USD
Software is eating the world, but AI is eating software. We live in unprecedented times – AI has the potential to exponentially augment human intelligence. Every person will have a personal tutor, coach, assistant, perso…
Est. 243,225 USD
Scale GP is building the infrastructure that makes enterprise AI seamless. We are looking for a Senior Infrastructure Engineer to act as a primary technical lead, engineering the 'paved road' for our knowledge retrieval…
Est. 324,000 USD
About Scale AI Scale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy reliable production AI applications. We partner with leading enterprises and government organizations to accelerate their AI i…
Est. 283,500 USD
About Scale AI Scale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy reliable production AI applications. We partner with the world's leading enterprises and government organizations to accelerat…
Est. 326,700 USD
Scale AI accelerates the development of AI systems by providing the data, infrastructure, and tooling that power the most advanced models in the world. Our teams operate at the intersection of cutting-edge research, larg…