Head of Vision – Language – Action; VLA Development – Manipulation

Overview

Head of Vision – Language – Action (VLA) Development – Manipulation at Shaw Daniels Solutions.

Location:

London – 5 days in the office.

Senior leadership role overseeing the development of Vision–Language–Action systems for humanoid robotics research and deployment.

• Lead the strategy and execution of representation learning, behaviour cloning, and reinforcement learning programs.
• Drive large-scale post-training for multi-modal LLM / VLM / VLA systems, integrating vision, audio, proprioception, LiDAR, and point cloud data.
• Build pipelines to continuously collect, version, label, and evaluate simulation and tele-operation data.
• Partner with MLOps and platform teams to scale distributed training and optimise models for real-time edge inference.
• Grow, mentor, and unblock a high-performing team of researchers and engineers.

• 6+ years developing deep learning systems, with 2+ years in technical leadership.
• Hands-on experience with LLM/VLM architecture design and large-scale training.
• Proven expertise in robotics or autonomous systems (behaviour cloning, actor-critic, offline RL).
• Experience deploying to humanoid or legged robots.
• Track record of shipping to real hardware and refining via data flywheels.
• Background in autonomous control and planning.
• Contributions to research or open-source in multi-modal transformers, diffusion control, or world models.
• Familiarity with OpenVLA, π models, or other VLA frameworks.
• High autonomy and direct ownership of impactful initiatives.
• Work with leading experts across AI, robotics, and engineering.
• A fast-moving, transparent, low-bureaucracy startup environment.

• Seniority level:
  Associate
• Employment type:
  
  Full-time
• Job function:
  Information Technology
• Industries:
  Robotics Engineering and Robot Manufacturing

Benefits and compensation:
Competitive compensation and stock options. Paid vacation (aligned with local labour regulations). Office perks including meals, snacks, and team events. Opportunities to collaborate across teams in Vancouver and Boston.