Head of VLA Development

Head of VLA Development
Specialists in sectors like manufacturing, construction, and logistics face rising challenges. We believe that our mission can prevent the massive shortages in fast - paced world and its specific dynamics. All involved into robotics industry.

What You'll Do :

• Set and drive the strategy for representation learning, behaviour cloning and reinforcement learning (RL).
  
• Lead large-scale post-training of multi-modal LLM / VLM / VLA systems; continuously integrate new sensor modalities (vision, audio, proprioception, LiDAR, point cloud, …).
  
• Build always-on pipelines that collect sim + tele-op logs, store them in a versioned lake, transform / label streams with weak supervision, curate balanced datasets and run an evaluation loop that feeds fresh failure cases back into training.
  
• Partner with MLOps and Data Platform teams to scale distributed training and optimise models for real-time edge deployment.
  
• Hire, mentor and unblock a small, elite team of research scientists and engineers.
  
  We're Looking For :
  
• 6+ years building deep-learning systems, 2+ years technical team leadership.
  
• Hands-on experience with LLM / VLM architecture design, billion-parameter training and fine-tuning.
  
• Proven robotics, autonomous driving or LLMs expertise (behaviour cloning, actor-critic, offline RL) applied to robotics or autonomous driving.
  
  Nice to have :
  
• Deployment on humanoid or legged robots.
  
• Demonstrated record of shipping to real robots or vehicles and iterating via data-flywheel loops.
  
• Experience in autonomous vehicle control and planning.
  
• Research or open-source work in multi-modal transformers, diffusion control, world models.
  
• Familiarity with OpenVLA, Physical Intelligence (π) models or other open-source VLA frameworks. - a bit used with OpenVLA no Physical Intelligence
  
  What We Offer :
  
• Competitive salary plus participation in our Stock Option Plan
  
• Paid vacation with adjustments based on your location to comply with local labor laws
  
• Travel opportunities to our Vancouver and Boston offices
  
• Office perks: free breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and regular team events
  
• Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives
  
• Collaboration with top-tier engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics
  
• Startup culture prioritizing speed, transparency, and minimal bureaucracy
  
  How to Apply:
  
  
• For more information on the role, or an informal discussion regarding opportunities we have available, please contact Alicja Szymanska on (phone number removed) or email : (url removed)
  
  Why work with Proactive?
  
• Proactive Global is an industry leading, specialist engineering recruitment agency focused on the automation, manufacturing and advanced technology sectors. We offer specialist recruitment services to a niche customer base, vetting that our clients offer the best opportunities for your career. Proactive encourages and promotes equality and diversity within the workforce. We act with honesty, integrity and impartiality, ensuring your application is considered on its own merits and without bias.
  
• When registering with Proactive you will have the opportunity to apply for some of the most interesting, specialist, opportunities in the marketplace, with the biggest companies in the sector. Follow us on Linkedin and Facebook for industry news and download our app for live notifications about newly listed vacancies. We look forward to helping you find your next role!
  
  Proactive Global is committed to equality in the workplace and is an equal opportunity employer.
  Proactive Global is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy