Lead Research Scientist

Established nearly two centuries ago, FM is a leading mutual insurance company whose capital, scientific research capability and engineering expertise are solely dedicated to property risk management and the resilience of its policyholder-owners. These owners, who share the belief that the majority of property loss is preventable, represent many of the world’s largest organizations, including one of every four Fortune 500 companies. They work with FM to better understand the hazards that can impact their business continuity to make cost-effective risk management decisions, combining property loss prevention with insurance protection. The Automation and Intelligent Systems Research Team develops science-based knowledge and practical guidance for the safe, reliable, and resilient adoption of emerging industrial technologies. Autonomous robotics is changing how industrial facilities move materials, inspect assets, monitor hazards, and respond to abnormal conditions. These systems can reduce exposure by reaching hazardous or inaccessible locations, but they can also introduce new mechanical, electrical, fire, cyber-physical, operational, and business-interruption risks. This role will build the evidence required to identify these risks and develop effective mitigation strategies. As Lead Researcher in Autonomous Robotics Systems, you will define and lead applied research on autonomous mobile robots, automated guided vehicles, quadrupeds, humanoids, drones where appropriate, robotic manipulators, fleet-management systems, and related sensing and control infrastructure. You will evaluate both sides of the robotics risk equation: hazards introduced by autonomous systems and robotics applications that can detect, assess, or mitigate property loss. You will combine hands-on laboratory and field-oriented experimentation with systems engineering, hazard analysis, reliability and resilience assessment, scientific publication, and translation of evidence into practical guidance for engineering, underwriting, approvals, claims, and client-facing stakeholders.
• Own and deliver a multi-year applied research portfolio on autonomous robotics in industrial environments, aligned with FM property-loss and business-continuity priorities.
• Characterize robotic architectures, operating modes, autonomy levels, fleet orchestration, dependencies, failure modes, and interactions with buildings, equipment, stock, utilities, people, and other automated systems.
• Design and execute rigorous experiments on physical robots and testbeds, supported by simulation, digital twins, hardware-in-the-loop methods, and representative industrial scenarios.
• Develop repeatable methods to assess mechanical, electrical, battery and charging, ignition, collision, dropped-load, navigation, communications, localization, software, cyber-physical, common-mode, and cascading risks.
• Evaluate reliability, availability, maintainability, resilience, safe degradation, emergency stopping, recovery, manual fallback, and business-continuity performance under normal and off-nominal conditions.
• Investigate how robotics can improve risk identification and mitigation through remote inspection, situational awareness, anomaly detection, hazardous-area access, post-event assessment, and response support.
• Integrate sensors, perception, localization and mapping, navigation, control, edge computing, communications, robot middleware, fleet-management software, and industrial or digital-twin platforms.
• Create evidence-based recommendations, test protocols, risk taxonomies, evaluation tools, operating guidance, and inputs to standards or approval criteria.
• Lead collaborations with FM stakeholders, clients, universities, manufacturers, integrators, laboratories, and standards organizations while protecting research independence and data governance.
• Publish and present high-quality research, track emerging deployments at industrial facilities, and represent FM in relevant scientific and standards communities.
• Mentor researchers and engineers, review technical work and experimental designs, and promote reproducible software, datasets, laboratory procedures, and research integrity. Qualifications
• PhD in robotics, mechatronics, control, mechanical, electrical or computer engineering, computer science, or a related field, with relevant post-degree research or industrial experience; or a master’s degree with substantial equivalent research achievement and technical leadership.
• Demonstrated research depth in autonomous robotic systems, including several of the following: mobile robotics, navigation, localization and mapping, perception, sensor fusion, motion planning, control, manipulation, fleet orchestration, or human-robot interaction.
• Proven hands-on experience integrating, commissioning, testing, and troubleshooting physical robotic systems in laboratory or industrial environments.
• A record of scientific or technical impact through peer-reviewed publications, patents, standards contributions, open-source assets, validated prototypes, deployed systems, or technology transfer.
• Strong Python and C++ skills and practical experience with ROS 2 or equivalent robotics middleware, simulation, source control, automated testing, and research software practices.
• Experience designing statistically and scientifically sound experiments, selecting baselines and metrics, analyzing uncertainty, documenting limitations, and producing reproducible results.
• Working knowledge of systems engineering and structured hazard or reliability methods such as FMEA, fault-tree analysis, HAZOP, STPA, bow-tie analysis, or equivalent approaches.
• Ability to connect technical findings to property damage, stock or work-in-process loss, equipment breakdown, service interruption, dependencies, and recovery consequences.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary projects and partnerships, mentor colleagues, manage scientific quality, and communicate with technical, business, and executive audiences.
• Willingness and ability to work hands-on with robotic equipment and to support experiments or site-based learning consistent with FM safety and governance requirements. Desired skills and competency areas Industrial mobile robots, automated guided vehicles, service robots, quadrupeds, humanoids, manipulators, drones, or heterogeneous robot fleets.
• Functional safety, machinery safety, safety-rated sensing and control, emergency functions, verification and validation, and robotics-related standards.
• Battery systems, charging infrastructure, electrical protection, thermal hazards, power quality, and energy-management considerations for robotic fleets.
• Industrial automation and OT, safety PLCs, industrial communications, IoT/IIoT, edge and cloud integration, and secure remote operations.
• Cybersecurity for robots and fleet-management systems, including identity, access, segmentation, update integrity, communications resilience, monitoring, and incident recovery.
• 3D perception, computer vision, thermal imaging, acoustics, gas sensing, sensor fusion, semantic mapping, digital twins, and asset-context models.
• Reliability engineering, accelerated or stress testing, fault injection, resilience engineering, maintainability, spare-parts strategy, and recovery planning.
• Experience with industrial risk engineering, property loss prevention, equipment hazards, fire protection, business interruption, or insurance-related engineering is advantageous but may be developed in role.
• Experience collaborating with manufacturers, integrators, clients, universities, standards bodies, certification organizations, or regulatory stakeholders. Success in this role
• Produces defensible, reproducible evidence about autonomous-robotics risks and mitigation effectiveness.
• Delivers practical methods and guidance that FM engineers and other stakeholders can apply to industrial facilities.
• Demonstrates robotics applications that improve hazard identification, early detection, inspection quality, or recovery while clearly documenting limitations.
• Builds a credible external research network and develops the technical capability of the broader FM team.
• Balances scientific ambition with safety, independence, delivery discipline, and measurable business relevance.