Senior II/ Staff Robotics Platform Evaluation Engineer

Your Impact at LILA

Lila runs a dedicated platform evaluation function within our robotics organization. The team tests and benchmarks alternative robotics platforms, including mobile manipulators, AMRs and AGVs, and other form factors, against our current production baseline. Consistent methodology across platforms is the point: results have to be directly comparable to be useful for platform decisions.

As the Senior Robotics Platform Evaluation Engineer and Team Lead, you lead this team and stay hands-on. You define how we evaluate robotics platforms, build and prioritize the test roadmap, manage 2 to 3 engineers, and remain directly involved in hardware setup and test execution yourself.

You report to the Associate Director, Next Gen AI Robotics, and you are the primary point of contact for platform evaluation results across the broader organization. This is a lab role, not a purely managerial one.

What You'll Be Building

Team leadership

• Manage and mentor 2 to 3 Robotics Platform Evaluation Engineers
• Set the evaluation roadmap and prioritize which platforms and capabilities get tested, and when
• Define and maintain the team's evaluation methodology and shared tooling so results stay comparable across every platform tested
• Own communication of findings, tradeoffs, and recommendations to the Associate Director and cross-functional stakeholders

Individual contribution

• Commission new robotics platforms from unboxing through integration with our software stack and infrastructure
• Run test suites spanning navigation, manipulation, pick-and-place, perception, and controls
• Integrate platforms with ROS2 and Nav2, adapting drivers, configurations, and interfaces for each new robot
• Validate arm reachability and AMR maneuverability in Isaac Sim against models of our lab environments before hardware testing

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Professional experience deploying robotics platforms in production, commercial, or applied R&D settings
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers on a hands-on hardware or robotics team
• Hands-on ROS2 and Nav2 experience in real deployments, not simulation alone
• Experience with manipulation and pick-and-place, including motion planning and grasp execution, plus controls for arms or mobile bases
• Direct experience with AMRs/AGVs, 6 to 7 DoF arms, grippers, and camera or lidar perception pipelines including calibration
• Experience with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, or an equivalent simulation platform, for reachability or navigation validation
• Track record building a process, framework, or standard from scratch, and turning test results into decision-ready comparisons

Bonus Points For

• Evaluated or compared multiple robotics platforms or vendors head to head
• Experience with mobile manipulators, meaning an arm mounted on a mobile base
• Built internal tooling or frameworks for standardized robot testing
• Background in industrial, warehouse, logistics, or manufacturing automation