Senior to Staff AI Product Engineer
1X · San Carlos, United States · 2mo ago
About 1X
We’re building humanoid robots that work in the home – doing the chores, handling the tasks, and giving people their time back. Simple, but it’s not.
To do this right, we have to solve robotics, AI, manufacturing – at the same time, at scale, in a form factor that has to be safe enough to live with your family. If you’re inspired by this, you’ll thrive here.
NEO is our flagship - a home robot designed to move, learn, and operate in the real world alongside real people. We’re not demoing it - we’re shipping it!
If you’ve spent your career working on problems that matter and want to see them actually reach the world - this is that moment. We’re scaling, we’re hiring with intention, and we need people who want to build something that will genuinely change how humans spend their time.
About the Team
The Behavior team builds the software that enables NEO to be an intelligent, autonomous character living alongside people. We develop the decision-making systems, world simulation, and behavior frameworks that allow robots to perceive their surroundings, understand context, prioritize goals, and interact naturally in dynamic environments.
Your Charter
Build the behavior systems that bring humanoid robots to life. You will design scalable AI architectures that enable robots to reason about their environment, make autonomous decisions, manage competing goals, and perform complex tasks in real-world homes. You will build the systems that orchestrate multiple ML models with varying capabilities. Your work will create robots that behave naturally and reliably in real world situations.
Key Outcomes
Build an orchestration framework that interfaces with multiple LLMs, breaking complex tasks into simple steps. This will form the foundation for scalable behavior architectures that enable robots to autonomously perform household tasks naturally and intuitively.
Build systems that extract, store and index relevant details about environments and people.
Build decision-making frameworks using behavior trees, hierarchical state machines, or similar AI architectures.
Partner with Core, World Model, Apps, and Motion teams to integrate behavior systems into real-world robot operation.
Improve the realism, robustness, and adaptability of robot behaviors while establishing engineering best practices for large-scale behavior development.
Key Competencies
Expertise building products that leverage the capabilities of LLMs and custom ML models, exposing these in unique and intuitive user experiences.
Experience with multiple key AI technologies, such as conversational interfaces, agent orchestration, prompt engineering, MCPs, and management of agent context and memory.
Strong understanding of decision-making architectures, planning systems, and autonomous agent behaviors.
Excellent software engineering skills.
Strong systems thinking with the ability to simplify complex autonomous behaviors into maintainable software architectures.
Comfortable leading technical initiatives and collaborating across multidisciplinary engineering teams in a fast-moving environment.
Minimum Requirements
6+ years of professional experience (Senior) or 10+ years (Staff) developing conversational AI, NPC behaviors, or system architecture.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Robotics, AI, or a related technical field.
System programming, and software design.
Preferred Skills
Experience implementing behavior trees, GOAP, hierarchical state machines, planners, or similar AI architectures under tight performance constraints.
Experience building open-world games, large-scale simulations, conversational AI, or emergent gameplay systems.
Familiarity with robotics, autonomous systems, reinforcement learning, or embodied AI.
Experience with navigation systems, pathfinding, task scheduling, perception systems, or world modeling.
Experience developing tools that enable designers, researchers, or engineers to rapidly author and debug complex AI behaviors.
What does a successful 1X Team Member look like:
Team members at 1X who thrive here are builders. They move fast, own their work completely, and treat time like it’s the one thing you can’t get back - because it is. They say what they mean, finish what they start, and hold themselves to a standard before anyone has to ask. We push each other to be better, and we do it with honesty and respect.
Compensation Range
190,000 – $280,000 + Equity
Benefits
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
Generous paid time off, company holidays, and parental leave
401(k) plan with company match (100% on the first 3% of contributions, 50% on the next 2%)
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA) options
Commuter benefits (transit and parking)
Short-term and long-term disability, and life insurance
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental health, financial, and personal support
Onsite snacks and catered lunches
Equal Opportunity Employer
1X is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, disability, military or veteran status, justice system impact, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.