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Research Development Chef Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Chef Robotics

Staff Autonomy Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$180K - $280K/yr

Own the end-to-end architecture and hands-on development of Chef's autonomy stack - perception ... research - continuously evaluating what's ready to move from research into production * Mentor ...

CCL Hospitality Group

Executive Chef

Greenbrae, CA · On-site

$105K - $115K/yr

Take advantage of outstanding career growth, professional development, and advancement ... Research customer preferences and develops a menu which incorporates local foods and flavors.

MEZZE CULVER CITY LLC

Head Chef

Culver City, CA

$80K - $100K/yr

Description Head Chef Lead and manage all restaurant operations in partnership with the General ... Work with Home Office support (Culinary Operations Director, Director of Restaurants, R&D, finance ...

Jose Andres Group

Head Chef

Culver City, CA · On-site

$80K - $100K/yr

Head Chef Lead and manage all restaurant operations in partnership with the General Manager to ... Work with Home Office support (Culinary Operations Director, Director of Restaurants, R&D, finance ...

Belmont Village

Chef Manager In Training

San Diego, CA · On-site

$75K/yr

... research-based programming with best-in-class care and a resident-centered approach. Our ... Belmont Village is dedicated to the growth and development of our team members, offering a wide ...

José Andrés Group

Head Chef

Culver City, CA · On-site

$80K - $100K/yr

Head Chef Lead and manage all restaurant operations in partnership with the General Manager to ... Work with Home Office support (Culinary Operations Director, Director of Restaurants, R&D, finance ...

Auberge Collection

Chef de Cuisine

Napa, CA · On-site

$86K - $118K/yr

The CDC works closely with the Executive Chef to bring Bear's culinary vision to life while ... Culinary Leadership & Menu Development Menu Planning & Innovation Lead all menu planning, R&D, and ...

Salted

VP of Culinary

Los Angeles, CA · On-site

$180K - $220K/yr

This role reports directly to our CEO and initially will manage a team of two (Culinary Director + R&D Chef). Responsibilities include: * Define and execute a cohesive culinary roadmap that aligns ...

Auberge Collection

Chef de Cuisine

Napa, CA · On-site

$86K - $118K/yr

The CDC works closely with the Executive Chef to bring Bear's culinary vision to life while ... Culinary Leadership & Menu Development • Menu Planning & Innovation Lead all menu planning, R&D, ...

Stanford University

Sous Chef

Stanford, CA · On-site

$58K - $79K/yr

Stanford University is one of the world's leading teaching and research universities. Founded in ... Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: -Ability to suggest and execute creative menu development ...

Chef Robotics

Application Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Configure, test, and validate Chef's robotic systems in the lab, working closely with R&D to adapt to each customer's unique production environment. * Lead and project manage deployments ...

DEL REAL LLC

Senior Culinary Manager

Mira Loma, CA · On-site

$100K - $130K/yr

Senior Culinary Manager / Corporate Chef Classification: Exempt full-time Reports to: Head of R&D Backup Position: Director of R&D * PURPOSE We are seeking an exceptional Senior Culinary Manager with ...

Wayve

Research Scientist, Wayve Labs

Sunnyvale, CA · On-site

$230K - $380K/yr

Bespoke learning and development opportunities * Relocation support with visa sponsorship ... Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily ...

Wayve

Research Scientist, Wayve Labs

Sunnyvale, CA · Hybrid

$230K - $380K/yr

Bespoke learning and development opportunities * Relocation support with visa sponsorship ... Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily ...

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Showing results 41-60

All JobsResearch Development Chef JobsResearch Development Chef Jobs in California

Research Development Chef information

See California salary details

$47.9K

$100.5K

$162.8K

How much do research development chef jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 26, 2026, the average yearly pay for research development chef in California is $100,461.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $76,500.00 and $115,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in the Research Development Chef position, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Research Development Chef, you need comprehensive culinary expertise, a deep understanding of food science, and often a degree in culinary arts or food technology. Familiarity with laboratory equipment, recipe management software, and food safety certifications like ServSafe is highly valuable. Creativity, problem-solving skills, and strong collaboration abilities help you excel when designing innovative recipes and working with cross-functional teams. These skills ensure you can successfully develop new food products that meet both culinary standards and market demands.

What are the typical daily responsibilities of a Research Development Chef?

As a Research Development Chef, your day often involves creating and testing new recipes, refining existing products, and collaborating with food scientists and marketing teams on product concepts. You'll also conduct sensory evaluations, oversee kitchen trials, and ensure that all recipes meet quality, safety, and cost parameters. Working closely with other chefs, suppliers, and sometimes clients, you help bring innovative food ideas from the test kitchen to commercial production. The role is dynamic and hands-on, blending creative culinary work with research and project management tasks.

What does a Research Development Chef do?

A Research Development Chef is responsible for creating, testing, and refining new food products, recipes, and menu items, often for restaurants, food manufacturers, or retail brands. They blend culinary creativity with food science and market trends to develop innovative and scalable food concepts. Their role involves experimenting with ingredients, improving flavors, ensuring product consistency, and considering factors like cost, nutrition, and production feasibility.

What are the most commonly searched types of Research Development Chef jobs in California? The most popular types of Research Development Chef jobs in California are:
What are popular job titles related to Research Development Chef jobs in California? For Research Development Chef jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Research Development Chef jobs in California look for? The top searched job categories for Research Development Chef jobs in California are:
What cities in California are hiring for Research Development Chef jobs? Cities in California with the most Research Development Chef job openings:
Research Development Chef jobs near you
Infographic showing various Research Development Chef job openings in California as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 76% Full Time, 21% Part Time, 1% Temporary, and 2% Contract. Highlights an 99% Physical, and 1% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $100,461 per year, or $48.3 per hour.
Staff Autonomy Engineer

Staff Autonomy Engineer

Chef Robotics

San Francisco, CA • On-site

$180K - $280K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Retirement, PTO

Posted 15 days ago

Job description

Chef Robotics is bringing AI into the physical world, starting with one of the world's largest industries: food manufacturing.

Food production faces one of the most severe labor shortages in the US, with more than 1 million open jobs today and demand continuing to grow. Our robots help manufacturers automate repetitive food-preparation and assembly tasks so they can increase throughput, improve consistency, and keep production onshore.

Today, Chef robots operate in production facilities across North America and Europe, serving customers including Amy's Kitchen, gategroup, and CookUnity. Our robots have made over 100 million servings in production, creating the world's largest proprietary dataset for AI-powered manipulation of deformable food. Every meal our robots produce makes the system smarter.

Backed by leading investors including Avataar Ventures, Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins, we're scaling rapidly with a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model and long-term customer partnerships. Our team includes engineers and leaders from Google, Cruise, Tesla, Amazon Robotics, Dexterity, Bear Robotics, Saildrone, and Zoox, united by a mission to build intelligent machines that solve meaningful problems in the real world.

If you're excited about solving hard problems, creating real customer impact, and shipping systems that operate in production every day, not just in the lab, you'll feel at home at Chef.


About the Role
 
As a Staff Autonomy Engineer, you will own the technical architecture of Chef's autonomy stack end-to-end - from perception and action prediction through closed-loop control and production deployment. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: expect to spend the majority of your time designing and building, with the remainder setting direction, mentoring engineers, and driving cross-functional alignment. You will report directly to the engineering leadership and have direct influence over how Chef's autonomy systems scale across a growing commercial fleet.
 
We are a small, high-ownership team. We work onsite five days a week and move with startup urgency.
 
In this role, you will:
  • Own the end-to-end architecture and hands-on development of Chef's autonomy stack - perception, action prediction, closed-loop control, and sensor fusion - from prototype through production deployment
  • Design and implement learning-based systems that predict and execute robot actions from visual and operational observations, generalizing across diverse ingredient types with minimal per-item tuning
  • Build closed-loop control systems that integrate vision, weight feedback, force-torque sensing, and trajectory planning for robust real-world manipulation
  • Develop rapid onboarding capabilities - algorithms and tooling that enable new meal types and ingredient configurations to be deployed quickly from minimal demonstrations
  • Instrument autonomy systems for production monitoring, failure detection, and continuous improvement; build data collection pipelines that feed back into model retraining
  • Define objective qualification criteria for autonomy subsystems; drive reliability and performance improvements using production data across the deployed fleet
  • Investigate and integrate the latest advances in robot learning, foundation models, and manipulation research - continuously evaluating what's ready to move from research into production
  • Mentor senior engineers, lead design reviews, and help build a team capable of scaling Chef's autonomy stack to hundreds of deployed systems
What You Bring:
  • Demonstrated experience shipping a complete autonomy or manipulation system to real-world deployment - not just simulation or research prototypes
  • Deep technical expertise across at least two of: perception systems, visuomotor control, action prediction, sensor fusion, or motion planning
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals in Python and C++; experience building production-quality, maintainable systems across research and deployment codebases
  • Track record of technical leadership: driving architecture decisions, leading cross-functional projects, and raising the engineering bar on a team
  • Comfort with ambiguity and urgency - able to set direction and execute in a fast-moving startup environment
Nice-to-have:
  • Experience with food, agricultural, or consumer goods robotics where object variability is high
  • Experience with ML frameworks (PyTorch preferred) and the full model lifecycle - training, evaluation, deployment, and field iteration
  • Familiarity with foundation model approaches for manipulation: diffusion policies, VLAs, world models, JEPA-style architectures
  • Background in sim-to-real transfer, domain randomization, or synthetic data generation for manipulation
  • Experience with ROS and real-time robotics middleware
  • Prior startup technical leadership experience
$180,000 - $280,000 a year
Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
 
In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.
 

Chef Robotics is solving one of the hardest problems in AI: bringing intelligence into the physical world.

Our robots are already operating in production facilities every day, generating the real-world data that powers the next generation of embodied AI. If you want to build technology that leaves the lab, ships to customers, and transforms an industry, Chef is the place to do it.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
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