VLM Research Engineer

Job Title: VLM Research Engineer Location: Vapi, Gujarat Employment Type: Full-Time Overview We are seeking a highly skilled VLM Research Engineer to build multimodal (vision-language-action) models for instruction following, scene grounding, and tool use across platforms. The role involves developing advanced models that bridge perception and language understanding for autonomous systems. Key Responsibilities Pretrain and finetune VLMs, aligning them with robotics data including video, teleoperation, and language. Build perception-to-language grounding for referring expressions, affordances, and task graphs. Develop Toolformer/actuator interfaces to convert language intents into actionable skills and motion plans. Create evaluation pipelines for instruction following, safety filters, and hallucination control. Collaborate with cross-functional teams for integration of models into robotics platforms. Must-Haves Master’s or PhD in a relevant field. 1–2+ years of experience in Computer Vision/Machine Learning. Strong proficiency in PyTorch or JAX; experience with LLMs and VLMs. Familiarity with multimodal datasets, distributed training, and RL/IL. Nice-to-Haves Experience with world models, diffusion-policy integration, and speech interfaces. Familiarity with sim-to-real transfer in robotics applications. Success Metrics Success@k on language-based tasks. Grounding precision and latency. Sim-to-real performance retention. Domain Notes Humanoids: - Language-guided manipulation and tool use. AGVs (Autonomous Ground Vehicles): - Natural language tasking for warehouse operations; semantic maps. Cars: - Gesture and sign interpretation; driver interaction. Drones: - Natural language mission specification; target search and inspection. Application Instructions Interested candidates may apply by sending their resume and cover letter to parijat.patel@merai.co with the subject line: “VLM Research Engineer Application” .