Most “Head of AI” roles are about hiring plans and meetings. This one is about shipping.
We are partnered with one of Zurich’s rising stars in robotics building dexterous hands and more importantly the learning stack behind them. For them, the work gets judged in scaled customer environments, not in presentations or demo’s.
They’re in the early growth phase: small team, big ambition, fast iteration. With an aim to take over the key AI responsibilities from the CTO, if you can lead robot learning (RL/IL/VLA) with a deployment mindset, you’ll have a lot of ownership here.
Why this one is worth a look
* You’ll lead a small, high-calibre AI group (around 6) and be the technical reference point they respect
* The problems are genuinely hard: contact, slip, uncertainty, long-horizon tasks, messy real-world variation
* You won’t be boxed into “research only” or “deployment only”, you’ll own the full loop from data to policy, to evaluation and robustness to rollout and beyond.
* Real customer exposure across Europe, so your work ships and gets stress-tested quickly
What you’ll own
* AI strategy for robot learning (RL / imitation / VLA-style policies) focused on dexterous manipulation
* Mentoring strong researchers/engineers (mentor/teacher mindset, not corporate people-management)
* Working with customers and deployments (travel to client sites in France/Germany)
* PhD + strong publications in top robotics / robot learning venues (ICRA, IROS, RSS, CoRL; RA-L / T-RO also relevant)
* Deep understanding of modern robotics AI: RL, VLA, advanced modelling for robotics
* Evidence of shipping/deploying robotics solutions and thinking end-to-end (perception to policy and control to hardware constraints)
* Comfortable being customer-facing in a grounded, no-ego way
* Happy fully onsite in Zurich (5 days)
If you want to discuss the role, apply with your CV and drop me a message with 1-2 projects you have led that you feel would best showcase your experience.
Happy to share the full JD for a better review too, just message me.
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