Principal Software Engineer - Robotics & Physical AI Simulation

Caterpillar•Irving, TX

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Caterpillar is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for robotics and Physical AI simulation. The role leads closed-loop simulation for robotics, autonomy, perception, planning, controls, and machine systems, bridging virtual environments with production robotics software and physical-machine testing. The position is based in Irving, Texas (Dallas), and domestic relocation assistance and visa sponsorship are available. The engineer will own a major technical capability across teams and programs, define scalable architectures, lead critical implementation and engineering standards, align teams, and mentor engineers. The work includes developing reusable platform components and a technical roadmap, improving quality, automation, scalability, and cross-team adoption, and reducing duplicated solutions. Success measures include delivering measurable engineering outcomes within the first 12 months and developing technical depth across the organization through mentoring and standards.

Requirements

Advanced software engineering experience using Python and one or more of C++, C#, Java, Go, or Node.js.
Experience with APIs, distributed systems, containers, automated testing, CI/CD, source control, and observability.
Experience with cloud platforms and cloud-native architectures, including Docker and Kubernetes.
Demonstrated ability to lead architecture and technical delivery across multiple teams.
Strong communication, mentoring, problem-solving, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude, or Cursor.
Deep hands-on experience with NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab for robotics simulation, learning, training, testing, and validation.
Expertise with NVIDIA Newton or comparable GPU-accelerated physics engines, including rigid-body dynamics, contacts, friction, terrain interaction, vehicles, and robotic manipulation.
Experience with NVIDIA Omniverse, OpenUSD, ROS 2, Python, and C++.
Experience with NVIDIA Replicator for synthetic data and ground-truth generation.
Experience with NVIDIA Cosmos or comparable world foundation models for Physical AI and sim-to-real workflows.
Knowledge of perception, localization, planning, control, reinforcement learning, and autonomous-machine systems.
Experience with SIL, HIL, VIL, real-time systems, coordinate frames, synchronization, and deterministic execution.
Experience using CUDA, Docker, Kubernetes, NVIDIA Container Toolkit, and CoreWeave or comparable GPU cloud platforms.

Nice To Haves

Seven or more years of software development in robotics, autonomy, controls, or simulation.
Experience with heavy equipment, off-road autonomy, autonomous vehicles, or industrial robotics.
Experience building automated closed-loop regression environments and measurable sim-to-real correlation.
Experience optimizing large-scale parallel simulation and robot-learning workloads.

Responsibilities

Define technical architecture for robotics and Physical AI simulation.
Build closed-loop environments for autonomous and semi-autonomous machines.
Lead Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop, and Vehicle-in-the-Loop strategies.
Integrate ROS 2, autonomy software, machine controls, sensors, and simulation platforms.
Develop camera, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, IMU, and machine-sensor simulation capabilities.
Lead scenario generation, replay, regression testing, robot learning, and policy evaluation.
Establish simulation-to-real correlation, fidelity, timing, determinism, and acceptance criteria.
Scale parallel robotics simulation, reinforcement learning, and synthetic-data workloads on CoreWeave GPU infrastructure.
Own a major technical capability across multiple teams and programs.
Translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into scalable architectures and production software.
Lead architecture reviews, technical investigations, design decisions, and engineering standards.
Balance research and prototyping with secure, maintainable, production-ready delivery.
Mentor senior and developing engineers and support technical hiring and onboarding.
Partner with simulation, robotics, autonomy, controls, AI, data, cloud, product, and customer-facing organizations.
Establish a reference architecture and technical roadmap, deliver reusable platform components, and improve engineering quality, automation, scalability, and adoption.