Research Scientist, Embodied AI

Location: London Workplace: Hybrid About Niantic Spatial AI has learned from almost everything online, but it still struggles with the physical world, where 99.5% of economic activity happens. It doesn’t know where things are, how spaces fit together, or what changes over time. That’s one of the biggest unsolved problems in AI, and it’s the one we’re solving at Niantic Spatial. We build spatial AI models and services so people and machines can reason, learn and act safely in the physical world. We turn camera imagery, video, sensor data and archives into accurate, AI-readable representations of real places that robots can train in and machines can use to know exactly where they are. In physical AI, mistakes have real consequences. That’s why we build AI grounded in measured reality, not guesswork, so the people and machines relying on it can trust it to get things right. Our team built some of the world’s most widely used maps. Now we’re building something bigger: a living, measured record of the real world that machines can query, learn from and use to understand how places change over time. If you want to help AI understand the world we actually live in, come build with us. About the Role Niantic Spatial makes the physical world computable, helping people and machines collaborate safely by aligning how they understand reality. One of the fundamental problems we're helping autonomy teams and engineers overcome is the sim-to-real gap for visual-spatial understanding. We're applying our team's decades of experience encoding the world precisely as it is at Google Maps, Google Earth, and Niantic Labs to build the scalable real-to-sim stack for embodied AI. Niantic Spatial's R&D Team in London is seeking a Research Scientist to push the frontiers of Spatial AI, advancing our Large Geospatial Model as a dedicated member of the Embodied AI group. You will invent and develop algorithms and systems that sit at the cross-section of computer vision, machine learning, AI, graphics, and robotics. We're passionate about discovery, so we're looking for scientists who want to learn, publish, teach, and deploy every new invention. What You'll Do - Develop New Spatial Representations - Develop new spatial representations that embodied AI can learn from, train in, and act on. - Advance Real-to-Sim Pipelines - Advance real-to-sim pipelines connecting real-world observations, 3D reconstruction, simulation, and robotic policy learning. - Solve Emerging Spatial Problems - Solve emerging problems that relate to spatial intelligence, 3D scene representation, training data, model efficiency, and interactive systems. - Take Capabilities Through to Evidence - Take new capabilities through to evidence: what changed for the policy, not only what changed in the reconstruction. - Build Prototypes - Build proof of concept prototypes, initially for internal use, where some will need to run at production scale on customer data. - Collaborate Across Research and Product - Collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and product partners to bring novel models to production. - Publish Your Work - Publish and present your work. What You'll Bring - A PhD in computer vision, robotics, graphics, machine learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience, with a publication record at top venues. - Substantial expertise in robotics or embodied AI, including experience in sim-to-real transfer, domain randomization, policy evaluation, and simulation-based learning. - Deep experience with 3D scene representations: Gaussian splatting, neural fields, meshes, point clouds, or implicit representations. - You have applied generative or diffusion models to 3D data, such as scene completion, inpainting, relighting, or novel view synthesis from sparse capture. - You have worked on 3D semantics, open-vocabulary scene understanding, or scene graphs. - Proficiency in Python and Deep Learning libraries such as PyTorch. - GPU or graphics programming experience, such as custom CUDA kernels, shaders, or differentiable rendering. - A track record of contributing to widely used open-source research codebases. Nice to Have - Proficiency in C++. Compensation & Benefits Base salary range of £103,500 to £202,500. Compensation also includes an annual bonus, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package. Location & Work Model This role is based in our London office, with three days per week in office. Inclusive Application We know the strongest candidates don't always tick every box. If you're excited about this role and believe you could do it well, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't match every qualification listed - you may be exactly who we're looking for. Equal Opportunity Niantic Spatial is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals seeking employment at Niantic Spatial are considered without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military or veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected category under applicable laws. Niantic Spatial will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with applicable laws. Please contact your recruiter if you want to request an accommodation for the job application or interview process. Candidate Privacy I understand that by submitting my job application, the information I provide as part of that application will be used in accordance with Niantic Spatial's Privacy Notice for Job Applicants and Candidates https://www.nianticspatial.com/applicant-privacy-notice.