Co-op, Robotics Research – Data Engineering

About Rockwell Automation Robotics Center of Excellence

The Robotics Center of Excellence (RCoE) is the "innovation engine" of Rockwell Automation robotics. We are a dynamic, high-impact research group dedicated to applying the latest research to transform real-world industrial operations at scale. Our mission is to move beyond rigid, pre-programmed automation and usher in the new era of Autonomous Operations. Here, you'll work alongside world-class experts in a culture that prizes rapid prototyping, intellectual curiosity, and the drive to see "impossible" ideas working on the factory floor.

About the Job

We are looking for a passionate Robotics Research Intern who is eager to learn at the intersection of AI theory and hands-on implementation. In this role, you will work closely with senior researchers, gaining invaluable hands-on experience with cutting-edge embodied intelligence. Your work will centre on building data tooling and pipelines that move, curate, and integrate data into our platform, directly supporting the development and evaluation of perception and world models through the effective use of machine learning frameworks.

About You

You are a "builder-researcher", someone who is just as comfortable deriving a loss function on a whiteboard as you are debugging a real world robot. You are:

• Driven & Passionate: You have an obsessive curiosity about how machines interact with the physical world.

• Autonomous and Collaborative: You can take a vaguely defined problem and run with it and you thrive in a high-performing team where peer review and collective brainstorming elevate everyone.

• Innovative: You don't just apply existing tools and libraries; you invent new ones when the current state-of-the-art falls short.

• Impact-Oriented: You aren't satisfied with a simulation that works; you want to see your code moving tons of steel in the real world.

Your Responsibilities:

• Data Pipelines: Build data tooling and pipelines to ingest, organize, and integrate robot and perception data into our platform, supporting dataset curation and enabling model evaluation workflows, including dataset slicing and active learning loops for continuous improvement.

• Data Collection: Collect robot and perception datasets using LiDAR, cameras, and other sensors across a range of scenarios, including both structured experiments and real-world deployments.

• Dataset Development: Organize, curate, and label perception datasets, contributing to the creation of high-quality datasets for model training and evaluation.

• Software Excellence: Write clean, scalable, and high-performance code leveraging modern system programming languages and following software engineering best practices.

• Dissemination: Document your best practices and research through technical reports, white papers, and high-impact publications.

The Essentials - You Will Have:

• Actively pursuing a bachelors or advanced degree from an accredited college or university.

• Legal authorization to work in Canada is required. We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future for this job opening.

The Preferred - You Might Also Have:

• Data Engineering: Demonstrated experience working with datasets, including data processing, organization, and curation to support machine learning workflows, with familiarity with common data quality issues and their mitigation.

• Machine Learning: Solid understanding of Machine Learning concepts, particularly vision and applied robotics contexts, with a focus on how data impacts model performance.

• Robotics: Hands-on experience working with robotics hardware and sensors.

• Software Development: Strong foundation in software development, with the ability to design clean, maintainable systems and quickly understand unfamiliar codebases.

• AI Frameworks: Practical experience with PyTorch, Tensorflow, TensorRT, HuggingFace, etc.

• Simulation Tools: Exposure to simulation environments or synthetic data generation workflows.

• Problem Solving: A track record of solving complex, unstructured problems.

• Bonus points if you have:

  • Experience with ROS/ROS2

  • Experience with robotics principles including state estimation and 3D processing

  • Exposure to foundation models such as Vision-Language-Models

  • Experience with cloud storage such as Azure, AWS, etc.

  • Experience with containerization tools such as Docker, Apptainer, etc.

  • Experience with research, parsing academic publications, and literature review.

  • Experience engaging with the open source community with track record of working with maintainers to improve libraries.

What We Offer:

For this role, the Hourly Compensation is from $20 - $32/hour. Actual pay will be based on factors such as skills, knowledge, education, and experience.

This posting is for a newly created position within our organization.

At Rockwell Automation we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

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