Physical AI Engineer, Lead at Booz Allen in Washington, DC

Job description

Physical AI Engineer, Lead The Opportunity: Advance the future of autonomous systems, robotics, and embodied intelligence. As a Physical AI leader, you will shape, design, and deploy next generation robotic and multimodal AI capabilities that support some of the most complex missions in national security, defense, and emerging technology. At Booz Allen, you will lead multidisciplinary engineering teams, build scalable physical AI systems, and drive technical strategy across autonomy, reinforcement learning, world modeling, simulation to real transfer, robotic perception, and embodied AI. You will also partner with mission leaders to turn cutting‑edge research into operational, production‑grade capabilities. Join us. The world can’t wait. What You'll Work On: Lead the architecture, development, and deployment of Physical AI systems for autonomous systems and embodied agents. Design and implement models for perception, planning, motion control, manipulation, navigation, and sensor fusion. Develop large‑scale training pipelines using simulation, synthetic data generation, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning. Integrate multimodal AI including vision, language, and action models into real world physical AI platforms. Translate research innovations, such as robot learning, foundation models, and world models, into production-ready solutions. Mentor and guide senior engineers and establish engineering best practices and technical standards. Partner with business, research, and mission stakeholders to define strategy and assess emerging technologies. Represent Booz Allen in industry forums, technical exchanges, and client engagements. You Have: 8+ years of experience developing AI, robotics, autonomous systems, or machine learning solutions Experience delivering production AI systems from concept through deployment Experience with reinforcement learning, imitation learning, robot learning, computer vision, planning, autonomous navigation, manipulation, sensor fusion, multimodal AI, or foundation models Experience with Python, C++, and modern AI frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or Ray Experience with robotic middleware and simulators such as ROS, ROS2, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or Gazebo Ability to obtain a Secret clearance Master's degree Nice If You Have: Experience publishing research in robotics, embodied AI, or machine learning Experience with robot foundation models, world modeling, and digital twins Experience in humanoid robotics, dexterous manipulation, or mobile robotics Experience with distributed training, GPU acceleration, and edge or embedded deployment Experience contributing to open‑source AI or robotics ecosystems Doctorate degree in CS, Robotics, AI, EE, or ME Clearance: Applicants selected will be subject to a security investigation and may need to meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Compensation At Booz Allen, we celebrate your contributions, provide you with opportunities and choices, and support your total well-being. Our offerings include health, life, disability, financial, and retirement benefits, as well as paid leave, professional development, tuition assistance, work-life programs, and dependent care. Our recognition awards program acknowledges employees for exceptional performance and superior demonstration of our values. Full-time and part-time employees working at least 20 hours a week on a regular basis are eligible to participate in Booz Allen’s benefit programs. Individuals that do not meet the threshold are only eligible for select offerings, not inclusive of health benefits. We encourage you to learn more about our total benefits by visiting the Resource page on our Careers site and reviewing Our Employee Benefits page. Salary at Booz Allen is determined by various factors, including but not limited to location, the individual’s particular combination of education, knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience, as well as contract-specific affordabili