VLA Pre-training Lead (Deep Learning)

📋 Description

• Own the VLA pretraining roadmap: architecture, data, scaling, eval
• Explore transformer- and diffusion-based architectures, video pretraining for multimodal data
• Lead and mentor a deep learning team focused on pretraining and standards
• Design and run large-scale distributed training on multi-node GPU clusters
• Define pretraining data needs with Data Collection and external providers
• Build evaluation suites predicting downstream and real-robot performance

🎯 Requirements

• Track record building deep-learning systems with shipped models and leadership
• Proven experience pretraining large models (LLMs/VLMs/VLAs) at multi-node scale
• Deep understanding of transformer and diffusion architectures, multimodal training
• Strong Python + PyTorch/JAX; debug, profile ML systems; maintainable code
• Data-driven scaling decisions; clear trade-offs to researchers and leadership
• You document experiments clearly and build teams that do the same

🎁 Benefits

• Competitive equity: stock options with meaningful upside as we scale
• 30+ paid days off, including 23 days annual leave and UK holidays
• Private healthcare, including virtual and in-person care
• Pension scheme with 8% total contribution (5% employee, 3% employer)
• Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in-office
• Real ownership - direct access to founding leadership and product influence