Research Program Manager

Job Description

At Furhat Robotics we believe robots, done right, can have an incredible impact on our quality of life, and make the world more social, interactive, and inclusive.

While we develop all the technical breakthroughts to get there, we are also building the world's largest and most active scientific community in social robotics. They use our robots, collaborate with us, and advance the field using our tools. Furhat today is used by universities, research institutes, and innovation labs across the globe to explore human-AI interaction, social robotics, and embodied AI. Our robots are deployed in over 40 countries and used in hundreds of scientific publications across many disciplines.

We’re now looking for a Research Program Manager to lead and grow our research and academic collaboration ecosystem. This is a hybrid, multi-discplinary, role that is best filled by a scientist with a passion for community building.

About the Role

As Research Program Manager, you will play a central role in developing Furhat's research funding and our research collaboration ecosystem. You’ll manage ongoing research projects, drive new collaborations, grow our research funding, and act as the bridge between the scientific community and our internal teams.

Your role combines strategic coordination, community building, and hands-on project management — ensuring that Furhat remains the global hub for social robotics research.

🔧 Key Responsibilities

1. EU & Funded Project Management

• Manage active EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon Europe, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, etc).
• Coordinate reporting, deliverables, and partner communication.
• Oversee project budgets, timelines, and compliance with funding rules.
• Represent Furhat in consortium meetings and reviews.
• Prepare and submit project reports, financial summaries, and audits.
• Supervise or co-supervise staff (PhD and Masters students).

2. Research & Academic Collaboration

• Develop and maintain relationships with academic labs and scientific institutions using Furhat.
• Track and report research publications, thesis projects, and new use cases involving Furhat robots.
• Identify and support promising research groups with technical and community assistance.
• Supervise and coordinate MSc thesis students and research interns hosted at Furhat.
• Translate research insights into feedback for product and marketing teams.

3. Funding & Proposal Development

• Identify new funding opportunities aligned with Furhat’s roadmap.
• Coordinate with academic partners to co-author proposals.
• Draft technical, impact, and budget sections for new applications.
• Build and maintain a funding calendar and knowledge base.

4. Community & Events

• Act as “Customer Success Manager” for Furhat’s academic users — helping them succeed and share their work.
• Organize and host Furhat-led research events:
• Furhat Conference (FurCon)
• Workshops and special sessions at major conferences (HRI, IVA, RO-MAN, Interspeech, etc.)
• Represent Furhat at academic and innovation events globally.
• Maintain a research community newsletter and engagement channels.

5. Reporting, Insights & Communication

• Create quarterly insights reports on global trends in social robotics and human-AI research.
• Maintain an internal research impact dashboard (labs, publications, geography, topics).
• Contribute to blog posts, press releases, and internal communications highlighting Furhat’s academic footprint.

Skills & Requirements

🧩 Who You Are

You’re a connector between science, technology, and people. You love research, thrive in international collaborations, and have a sharp eye for both detail and strategy.

Qualifications

• PhD in robotics, AI, cognitive science, computer science, or related fields.
• 3+ years of experience in research project coordination, preferably within EU-funded programs (can be during doing your PhD).
• Prior experience in academia or at a research-intensive company/startup.
• Experience with grant proposal preparation and academic consortium management.
• Experience setting up and supervising successful Master's student theses.
• Strong organizational and communication skills.
• Excellent English (written and spoken); Swedish or other EU languages are a plus.
• Interest in human-robot interaction, AI, and social technologies.

Nice-to-Haves

• Prior experience at a research-intensive company/startup.
• Understanding of social robotics or conversational AI systems.
• Experience managing student projects or internships.

🎯 Success in This Role Means

• Active and well-managed portfolio of EU and research projects, and an active list of grants in construction.
• Strong relationships and trust built with 100+ academic labs worldwide.
• Clear, data-driven understanding of how Furhat is used in research.
• Growing network of thesis students and collaborators.
• Visible presence of Furhat in global academic events and publications.

Why Join Us

• Be at the heart of the core mission of the company defining the next frontier of social AI.
• Work with a world-class academic and industrial network from all over the world.
• Join a small, passionate, and global team where ideas matter and autonomy is real.
• Be part of writing one of the most exciting stories of scientific discovery our generation will create.

About the company

We are an artificial intelligence and social robotics startup with the vision to build social and lifelike robots, and make interaction with them truly humanlike. With roots in world leading research, and with customers and users all over the world, we are an ambitious small team of scientists and entrepreneurs backed by prominent investors and have outsized ambitions to make technology more humanlike. Furhat today is the leading, state of the art, robotics platform, powered by advances in generative AI and natural language understanding models, and is being used by thousands of scientists, engineers, and innovators, to test and deploy our robots in the real-world.

We are looking for high-achievers, dreamers, and believers, that share our passion for robotics and AI.