About the role
Your Impact at LILA Lila's Autonomous Science Platform is building a closed-loop, AI-driven scientific facility, and inter- and intra-cell transport in the AISF is a critical bottleneck on that path. We're bringing on a Robotics Engineer on a temporary basis to help unblock it. Sitting on the Next Gen Robotics team and based at Alewife, you'll work hands-on across the robotics stack — physical hardware and simulation — to integrate, tune, and debug systems that have to run reliably in production. The work spans ROS2 development, motion planning, and real-world hardware integration, with upstream science projects (including 1023-009-GRIDv1) gated on what you ship. This is a 3-month contract with potential to extend and potential to convert to full-time based on performance and ongoing need. What You'll Be Building Develop ROS2 nodes, launch files, and message/service/action interfaces to support inter- and intra-cell transport workflows Bring up and integrate physical robotic systems — including arms, AMRs, or mobile manipulators — into the AISF environment Build and maintain simulation environments in Isaac Sim and/or Gazebo to de-risk hardware deployments before they hit the floor Debug hardware and software integration failures end-to-end: kinematics, calibration, timing, and sensor issues Contribute domain depth in motion planning, navigation, localization, perception, or sensor fusion as
the team's needs evolve Document configurations, failure modes, and operating procedures so
the team can scale and maintain what you deploy What You’ll Need to Succeed Bachelor's degree or higher in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field, or equivalent hands-on industry experience Strong experience with ROS2: node development, launch files, message/service/action interfaces Solid understanding of robot kinematics — forward/inverse kinematics, Jacobians, transforms Proficiency in at least one robotic simulation platform: NVIDIA Isaac Sim and/or Gazebo Demonstrated experience working with physical robots — robotic arms, AMRs, and/or mobile manipulators Depth in at least one of: motion planning (MoveIt2, trajectory generation), autonomous navigation (Nav2), localization (SLAM, AMCL), perception (object detection, depth sensing), or sensor fusion (IMU, LiDAR, camera integration)
