Senior Staff Machine Learning Researcher

Senior Staff Machine Learning Researcher

About Us

Our teams atOcado Group plc.are putting the worlds retailers online using the cloud, robotics, AI, and IoT. We provide services to partner clients globally via our innovative advanced robotics technology, known as the Ocado Smart Platform ("OSP"), this drives our highly automated, multi-million-pound Customer Fulfilment Centres (CFCs). In our CFCs - together with the proprietary software applications - we operate a world-class online grocery business that automates the single pick of products, ready for your online delivery.

About the Role

Our robotic technology blends artificial intelligence, computer vision, and advanced sensing to automate the picking and packing process. Robotic arms make smart decisions on the fly, packing grocery items densely into bags without any prior knowledge of what the products are or whats coming next. By integrating seamlessly with the technology in The Hive, customer orders can be fulfilled without human touch. In this role, you will help us identify cutting-edge technologies to explore, propose and execute on research projects, and ultimately integrate them into our product.

Every day will bring new and exciting challenges on the job while you:

• Develop, evaluate and optimize algorithms related to the production of advanced robotic products
• Expand product capabilities and enhance performance by leveraging high-volume production data through cutting-edge machine learning
• Collaborate with data and engineering teams to transition ideas from lab to production
• Contribute to the technology roadmap, setting goals and timelines for AI research and development
• Build and advise on the use of tooling for tasks such as training pipelines, data curation and analysis, labelling, etc.
• Establish and uphold best-practice standards in ML research, MLOps, and technology readiness
• Mentor, grow, and motivate junior team members, interns, and peers

What you bring:

• Wealth of experience in machine learning, robotics, and optimization
• Demonstrated ability to conduct research and work with a development team to bring it to production in a timely manner
• Deep understanding of learning-based algorithms for sensing and acting and their application to robotic systems, such as vision-based detection, imitation learning, and deep reinforcement learning
• Ability to plan and deliver cutting edge research projects, advocating to stakeholders of diverse professional backgrounds and balancing investment of resources against potential business value
• Strong teamwork, communication, knowledge sharing, and mentoring skills
• Proficiency understanding adjacent domains (robotics, SW, HW) and how they come together to deliver product value
• 5+ years of experience programming with Python (PyTorch, JAX, HuggingFace, ClearML, etc.) or C++ in a professional capacity

Bonus qualifications:

• Master's or Doctorate degree in engineering with a focus in deep learning, reinforcement learning, robotics or similar experience
• Experience with adaptive, optimal, and learning-based control for robotic manipulation
• Familiarity with robotic applications that involve contact with the environment and manipulation
• Experience working with robotic sensors such as cameras and force sensors, and using them to model/reason about the environment
• Experience with Google Cloud ML tools such as Vertex-AI or equivalent (Azure, Sagemaker)
• Experience with robotic software such as ROS 2
• Experience with CUDA or equivalent

When our journey started, we were all about changing the way people shop for groceries. 20 years later, were developing our own ground breaking technology, opening multiple sites at an accelerating rate and engaging in exciting new business partnerships around the world!

Transforming an industry also means transforming the way we do business.As we continually develop new technologies and customer propositions, were looking for the Everyday Pioneers to lead us into the next stage of our evolution: enhancing our capabilities, inspiring our teams and developing new ways of working.

Changing the way the world shops, for good.