> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# Research Member of Technical Staff- Applied Research

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7a271421ade75153

Rhoda AI posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in Mountain View, CA, at $200,000–$300,000 base, above the not stated FDE median of $180,000 across 44 postings with pay. Adapts foundation world models to customer-specific tasks and operating environments, taking applications from requirements through evaluation and deployment. Read from the employer’s posting on November 9, 2026.

- [Rhoda AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/rhoda-ai)

Posted May 18, 2026 by Rhoda AI · open on Ashby as of Nov 9, 2026

**$200,000–$300,000** + equity Mountain View, CA Full-time

Adapts foundation world models to customer-specific tasks and operating environments, taking applications from requirements through evaluation and deployment.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F7a271421ade75153&placement=top)
- [View posting at Rhoda AI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/985ceeb2-1fa7-44ab-b2d4-487c9516970b/application)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$200K–$300K Above the median

Midpoint $250K · median $180K

This job $200K to $300K. Not stated FDE postings, 44 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $152K to $203K, median $180K.

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept (not covered)
3. Implementation
4. Operations (not covered)

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Role**: Technical lead

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The job is in Mountain View, CA. Could you work there?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: Mountain View, CA

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Pay**:

## More like this

[Usul](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/usul)

### [Technical Staff: Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/1fd7445530eb2af6)

San Francisco, CA On-site 4w ago

$160,000–$240,000

[S32](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/s32)

### [Solutions Engineer (Portfolio)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7df150a64263cbbf)

Palo Alto, CA 4mo ago

$130,000–$180,000

[Sieve](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sieve)

### [Forward Deployed Engineer, Physical AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/c01d9e4502e1f4bf)

San Francisco, CA On-site 5mo ago

$150,000–$350,000

## The job description from Rhoda AI

Posted by Rhoda AI on May 18, 2026

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We're looking for Applied Research Scientists and Research Engineers to take our foundation world models and adapt them for specific customer applications and industry use cases. We hire across levels — from senior/MTS to staff. This is a customer-facing role at the intersection of research and deployment — you'll work directly with partners and end users to understand their needs, translate them into model adaptations, and deliver measurable improvements in real-world settings across industries like logistics, manufacturing, and beyond.

### What You'll Do

- Work directly with customers and partners to understand application requirements and translate them into concrete model adaptation strategies
- Fine-tune and adapt our foundation world models for domain-specific tasks, environments, and operational constraints
- Design and run targeted experiments to evaluate model performance against customer-defined success criteria
- Build application-specific evaluation benchmarks and testing frameworks to validate model behavior in real customer environments
- Identify gaps between general-purpose model capabilities and the requirements of specific use cases, and drive research to close them
- Collaborate with the core research team to surface patterns and insights from customer deployments that inform foundational model development
- Communicate technical findings clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

### What We're Looking For

- Strong ML research and engineering skills with hands-on experience fine-tuning or adapting large models
- Ability to move fluidly between customer requirements and technical implementation
- Solid understanding of modern ML pipelines: pre-training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment
- Comfort working across teams — research, engineering, and customer-facing functions
- Strong communication skills: ability to explain model behavior and tradeoffs to non-technical audiences
- Experience in a customer-facing, applied research, or solutions engineering role
- Staff-level candidates are expected to define technical direction and drive research strategy independently; senior/MTS candidates execute complex projects with strong fundamentals and growing scope

### Nice to Have (But Not Required)

- Experience adapting foundation models (LLMs, VLMs, or policy models) to domain-specific applications
- Familiarity with one or more relevant verticals (e.g., logistics, manufacturing, warehouse automation, agriculture)
- Familiarity with inference optimization and runtime constraints (latency, memory, hardware targets) — sufficient to work alongside inference engineers, not own it
- Experience with sim-to-real transfer or adapting models trained in one environment to operate in another
- Hands-on experience with real robot deployments in production or near-production settings
- PhD or strong research background in ML, Robotics, or a related field

### Why This Role

- Rare combination of research depth and direct customer impact — you see your work matter in the real world
- Surface insights from real-world deployments that feed back into foundational model development
- Work across industries and applications with significant variety in problems and environments
- High visibility within the company as the bridge between our core models and the customers who use them

[View posting at Rhoda AI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/985ceeb2-1fa7-44ab-b2d4-487c9516970b/application)

## About Rhoda AI

Builds generalist robot intelligence from web-scale video and deploys AI-enabled robotic systems in industrial environments.

Series A · 50–100 people

## Similar jobs

[ChipAgents](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/chipagents)

### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2ff7b7b2f9e8f946)

San Jose, CA On-site 10d ago

$180,000–$300,000

[Figma](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/figma)

### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/a3cc84cc99542a8d)

San Francisco, CA · New York, NY Remote 2mo ago

$153,000–$376,000

[Analog Devices](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/analog-devices)

### [Staff Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/55ab1cb03c40426b)

San Jose, CA · Boston, MA 10d ago

$197,800–$271,975

[Salesforce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/salesforce)

### [Expert Agent Builder, Forward Deployed Engineering](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/0491722a5ab5e6bd)

San Francisco, CA 7w ago

$97,860–$316,750

[Slash](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/slash)

### [Software Engineer, Growth](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/6af1c7119a35d995)

San Francisco, CA On-site 5mo ago

$200,000–$250,000

- [Compare US FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary)
- [Similar jobs in SF Bay Area](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=sf-bay-area)
- [Similar jobs that build what the customer runs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=builds-for-customers)

Hiring at Rhoda AI and want this page changed or removed? Email info@nextmove.md and we take it down.

Employer postings · [How we read postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/method)