HRI Researcher

The Company

LUDO ROBOTICS is dedicated to building general-purpose robotic intelligence systems that are robust, adaptive, and capable of handling real-world scenarios. We believe that data-driven machine learning at massive scale is the key to unlocking these capabilities and enabling the widespread deployment of robots across society.

We are a new startup headquartered in Bay Area, California, with an office in Seoul, Korea. Our team spans a wide range of backgrounds and experience, from new graduates to seasoned domain experts. What matters most to us is ownership, speed, and intellectual curiosity - people who take responsibility, move fast, and enjoy thinking deeply about hard problems.

We are supported by a highly advanced AI Center within KRAFTON, a leading global video game company best known for the genre-defining worldwide success PUBG: Battlegrounds. KRAFTON has extensive experience building and operating large-scale, data-rich products, and we have secured investment from them. This gives us strong long-term backing, deep technical partnership opportunities, and access to world-class infrastructure and talent networks as we push robotic intelligence forward.

We are looking for passionate builders who want to explore uncharted territory, take on difficult problems, and ship ambitious, industry-shaping work. You will collaborate across diverse teams as we bring our technology from research into real-world deployment.

THE OPPORTUNITY

As an HRI Researcher at Ludo Robotics, you will shape how robots and people connect - designing, studying, and evaluating how robots perceive, interpret, and respond to human behavior in real-world settings. You will collaborate with engineers, designers, and domain experts to prototype socially capable robots that exhibit natural, acceptable, and effective behaviors across diverse contexts.

The ideal candidate brings deep knowledge of human-robot interaction, social cognition, or adjacent fields and the curiosity to translate that knowledge into working systems deployed on physical robots. You will help define how our robots look, act, and communicate as social agents in the world.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to research at the frontier of robot social intelligence, including gaze behavior, turn-taking, dialog, gesture, emotional expression, proxemics, and other socially acceptable robot behaviors.
• Design and conduct experiments, and field deployments to evaluate how people perceive and interact with our robots.
• Develop theoretical frameworks and translate them into prototype robot behaviors, bridging HRI theory with real-world system implementation.
• Synthesize findings from academic literature across HCI, social robotics, cognitive science, and AI to inform research direction and prototype design.
• Integrate social behavior models into robot control pipelines.
• Help establish metrics and evaluation frameworks for socially intelligent robot behavior.
  
  

Qualifications

• PhD or Master's degree in Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Robotics, or a related field (or equivalent research experience).
• Hands-on prototyping experience with robots (humanoid, mobile, or custom platforms) or virtual agents.
• Experience designing and running controlled user studies, participatory design sessions.
• Comfort working across disciplines, translating between user insights, theoretical models, and engineering constraints.
• A genuine curiosity about people and what makes interactions feel natural, safe, and engaging.
• Ability to implement or collaborate on technical systems - familiarity with ROS, Python, or related robotics tools is a plus.
• Experience with large language models (LLMs) is a plus, particularly in building conversational AI or dialog systems, or applying LLMs to robot behavior such as natural language understanding and task planning.
  
  

Reasonable Accommodation

LUDO ROBOTICS is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, the Company will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to apply for an open position, perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact the Operations Team, to begin the interactive process.

EEOC Statement

LUDO ROBOTICS provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type.

This position may be filled at multiple levels depending on experience, scope, and business need. In California, the expected salary range for this position is $98,000–$305,000. The listed expected salary ranges represent good faith estimates. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related factors including experience, education, skills, performance, and work location. This position is also eligible for equity compensation and a comprehensive benefits package.

Don’t meet every single requirement?

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply at jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At LUDO ROBOTICS we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might just be the right candidate for this or other roles.

Due to recent scams, our recruiters will only reach out to you via @ludorobotics.ai, @sds.com, @krafton.com or @pubg.com. If you received an email and are unsure you can always email recruiting_KA@Krafton.com