Robotics Simulation & RL Engineer
Humanoid•Cambridge, MA
About The Position
Humanoid is developing commercially scalable, safe humanoid robots, including its HMND-01 platform for industrial environments. The Robotics Simulation & RL Engineer will design and validate future robot platforms—including bipedal and wheeled systems—using physics simulation and reinforcement learning. The role develops tools to assess whether robot designs can perform real-world tasks before hardware is built, informing robot architecture, actuator selection, sensor placement, and control strategies. A key responsibility is owning and validating canonical robot models (URDF and simulation assets) used across simulation and control stacks.
Requirements
- M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Control, or a related field.
- Strong foundation in robot kinematics and dynamics.
- Experience with robot simulation environments such as MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Gazebo, or similar.
- Experience with reinforcement learning in robotics or physics-based simulation.
- Experience working with URDF or similar robot description formats.
- Strong programming skills in Python and/or C++.
- Experience training reinforcement learning locomotion or manipulation policies.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with legged, humanoid, or wheeled robots.
- Experience with whole-body control or torque-controlled robots.
- Experience with simulation-driven hardware design.
- Experience building large-scale reinforcement learning training pipelines.
Responsibilities
- Design and evaluate new robot platforms using physics simulation.
- Analyze robot capabilities, including workspace, manipulability, dynamic balance, and torque limits.
- Use reinforcement learning to stress-test robot designs and explore capability limits.
- Own and maintain URDF models of current and future robot platforms.
- Maintain the CAD-to-URDF-to-simulation pipeline.
- Develop tools and benchmarks to evaluate locomotion, manipulation, and platform robustness.
- Provide quantitative feedback to hardware teams on actuator sizing, joint placement, mass distribution, and sensor layout.
- Collaborate with mechanical, control, and perception teams to guide platform design decisions.
Benefits
- Comprehensive health coverage for US-based employees, including fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, virtual care, and employee assistance resources.
- 23 days of accrued PTO, separate sick leave, and paid company holidays.
- 401(k) retirement plan with a 4% employer match.
- Equity included.
- Free daily catered lunch, snacks, and drinks in-office.
- Opportunity to collaborate with engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics.
- Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives.
