Reinforcement Learning Engineer, Whole Body Controls, Optimus

About the role

Reinforcement Learning Engineer, Whole Body Controls, Optimus | Tesla (Tesla SI)

Location: Palo Alto, California | Req ID: 244485 | Job Type: Full-time

What to Expect

Tesla SI is solving robust embodied intelligence through humanoid robots. On the Whole Body Controls team, you will develop the policies that let Optimus walk, balance, recover from disturbances, and manipulate objects in real-world settings — the layer of the motion stack that turns high-level intent into physically robust motion on real hardware.

This role is for engineers with a strong reinforcement-learning foundation who may be new to robotics: we will teach you the physics and control, and you will bring the reinforcement learning expertise that lets the robot learn to move. Most importantly, the policies you deploy will be repeatedly shipped to and used by thousands of humanoid robots in real-world applications.

We hire at all levels, including recent graduates with a strong reinforcement learning foundation and a demonstrated project or research record.

What You'll Do

• Develop end-to-end reinforcement-learning policies for whole-body control spanning locomotion and manipulation: walking, balancing, disturbance recovery, and manipulating objects
• Design reward functions, action and observation spaces, and curricula; tune and scale reinforcement-learning training
• Improve the sample efficiency, exploration, stability, and sim2real robustness of learned policies
• Build large-scale, simulation-based training pipelines
• Evaluate policies both in simulation and on hardware, and ship them to a fleet of bots

What You'll Bring

• Proficiency in Python (numpy, pytorch)
• Strong reinforcement-learning fundamentals, including policy-gradient and actor-critic methods, with hands-on experience training reinforcement-learning agents
• Curiosity about physics and robotics and an eagerness to learn control and dynamics on the job; no prior robotics experience required
• Preferred: large-scale or distributed reinforcement learning and massively parallel simulation (e.g. mjlab, IsaacLab); reward shaping, curriculum learning, or sim2real; any robotics or control exposure
• Equivalent experience through projects, research, or coursework is acceptable

Benefits

Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:

• Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction
• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program
• Earned Wage Access: Real-time pay access paid daily, subject to eligibility and schedule (applicable for below Sr. Managers levels)

Expected Compensation$176,000 - $420,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefitsPay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.