Member of Technical Staff, Runway
Robotics Engineer
$270-370k
+ Equity
AI-powered creativity tools
Open for applications
AI-powered creativity tools
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$270-370k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To ensure that anyone anywhere can tell their stories.
Role
Who you are
- You have personally deployed software on real robot hardware and iterated to make it work — whether learned policies, motion planning, classical control, or perception-driven manipulation. You can walk through a specific system you shipped, what broke on the physical robot that didn't break in sim or testing, and how you fixed it
- Fluency in the software-to-robot interface: action/command spaces, control frequencies, observation pipelines, calibration, and how each affects real-world behavior
- Comfort working at the intersection of software and physical systems: you can reconfigure a robot workspace and trace a policy failure in the same afternoon
- Bonus: direct experience deploying learned policies (VLAs, diffusion policies) on real hardware; experience with video/multimodal generative models or world models
What the job involves
- Building general world models — systems that understand and simulate reality across tasks, modalities, and domains — requires closing the loop between learned representations and real-world action
- We're looking for a Robotics Engineer to bring our video-native foundation models onto real hardware: deploying world-model-based policies on real robots and making them work in the real world
- You will work across the full stack of robot learning — from data collection and task design, to policy deployment, to physical evaluation
- This is a hands-on, execution-oriented role at the intersection of foundation models, learned robot policies, and hardware
- You'll bring deep robotics domain expertise and help us ship world-model-based robot policies end-to-end, with applications ranging from manipulation to mobile robotics
- Own the deployment loop for learned policies (VLAs, diffusion policies, World Action Models) on real robot arms: inference serving, action decoding, controller integration, latency budgets, and safety limits
- Diagnose real-world policy failures — determining whether the problem is data coverage, camera/proprioception mismatch, or execution — and partner with the research team to fix it at the right layer
- Design demonstration data collection protocols (task setup, camera placement, teleop conventions) that produce data our world models can actually learn from — working with our existing teleop and lab infrastructure
- Partner with research to run controlled experiments connecting world model representations, data composition, and fine-tuning recipes to physical success rates
- Define and run physical evaluation protocols so results are trustworthy and comparable across policy iterations
- Adapt our policy recipe to partner hardware and new embodiments
Our take
Runway is revolutionising content creation and video editing with machine learning, harnessing the expansive capabilities of web-based tools. At the forefront of this transformation, the startup offers a suite of AI-powered editing tools tailored for designers, artists, and creators, setting itself apart in an industry dominated by enterprise-focused software solutions.
The company has rapidly gained recognition among some of the world's largest brands, including R/GA, New Balance, Google, and IBM, by appealing directly to creative professionals. This approach has not only solidified Runway's position in the market but also facilitated its integration into the design curricula of esteemed institutions such as NYU, RISD< and MIT.
In a testament to its growing influence and success, Runway achieved unicorn status in 2023 following a landmark $100M funding round, which valued the company at $1.5B. This milestone not only reflects investor confidence but also positions Runway to expand its innovative tools and further democratise access to advanced video editing capabilities globally.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
112% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Feb 2026
$315m
SERIES E
Apr 2025
$308m
SERIES D
Total funding: $861.5m
Company benefits
- 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage: We cover 100% of medical, dental and vision for our US employees AND their dependents. Based on the plans selected, we have complimentary mental health benefits and a free One Medical membership
- Unlimited days of PTO: We have unlimited PTO with a minimum of 15 days a year. We also have a paid sabbatical program after employees have been with Runway for 3 years and again after 5 years. And of course, we can't forget about Summer Fridays
- 401k Matching, 3% matching: Plan for the future! We provide a 3% 401K match for our US based employees
- Remote $250 stipend: All of our employees outside of commuting distance to the office, can expense up to $250 per month on co-working spaces, lunch or groceries, and internet connection
- Donations supporting our community: Beyond our employees, we have a commitment to our communities. Every quarter, Runway employees choose an organization for the company to support through a donation
- Custom setup, tech setup stipend: In addition to the choice of laptop, all employees get a stipend to customize their tech set up as they want
- Parental leave for all parents: We offer 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave plus a gradual return to work plan. This coverage is for all parents, regardless of how a child is brought into the family
- L&D $600 stipend: We’re investing in our employees’ long term growth by giving every employee $600 per year to spend on their personal or professional development. That means conferences, courses, and books, oh my!
- Wellness $600 stipend: We set ambitious goals and work hard to achieve them, so we believe it’s important to invest in employees’ mental and physical health. The $600 annual wellness stipend can be used for anything from therapy sessions to gym memberships
Company HQ
Civic Center, New York, NY
Leadership
Anastasis Germanidis
(Co-Founder & CTO)Trained as a Backend Engineer, they have held roles at Zocdoc, Chartbeat, and Quantcast as well as working as a Machine Learning Researcher in Computer Vision for IBM.
Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz
(Co-Founder & CDO)Previously co-founded Deenty, an online booking platform for dentist appointments.
Cristóbal Valenzuela
(Co-Founder & CEO)Worked as a Researcher at New York University from 2018 to 2019. Also spent time as a Professor at the UAI School of Design.
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