SI Engineer, Whole Body Controls, Optimus

About the role

• SI Engineer, Whole Body Controls, Optimus | Tesla (Tesla SI)
• Location: Palo Alto, California | Req ID: 275999 | 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 build the models behind whole-body motion — the policies that let Optimus walk, balance, recover from disturbances, and manipulate objects — including control of the hands — on real hardware.

Similar to the end-to-end models behind Full Self-Driving, we strive for simple, scalable algorithms; as an SI Engineer you will own the modeling side of that effort, designing network architectures, building and tuning training recipes, and shaping the data and representations that turn raw sensor streams into robust motion, working across the full training stack from pre-training to reinforcement learning.

This role is for engineers with deep learning fundamentals; robotics domain knowledge is a bonus. We hire at all levels, including recent graduates with strong deep learning fundamentals and a demonstrated project or research record.

What You'll Do

• Design and iterate on network architectures for whole-body motion policies, world models, and learned dynamics models
• Build, tune, and scale training recipes — losses, curricula, optimization, and pre-training-to-reinforcement-learning pipelines
• Build robust data pipelines and data engines that feed model training at scale
• Create evaluation benchmarks that enable fast, iterative model improvement
• Improve the robustness of learned policies, and deploy them on Optimus

What You'll Bring

• Proficiency in Python (numpy, pytorch)
• Deep learning fundamentals: architectures, optimization, training dynamics, and representation learning
• Proficiency with modern network architectures (such as transformers and sequence models), and a strong grasp of how to design and adapt them
• Experience training neural networks in PyTorch, including large-scale or distributed training
• Experience building robust data pipelines and data engines for large-scale model training
• Preferred: designing novel architectures or training recipes that shipped to production; world models, imitation learning, or reinforcement learning; any robotics, control, or multimodal-sensing 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.