Simulation and Validation Software Engineer

Mind Robotics • Palo Alto, CA

2d

About The Position

At Mind Robotics, we're building generalized physical AI — robotic systems capable of dexterous, adaptive, and reasoning-intensive work in real-world industrial environments. Validation is how we make sure our robots actually work — not just once on a bench, but every time, on every robot, in the field. Closing the gap between simulation, hardware test, and the real robot is what makes that reliability possible. We're looking for a Software Engineer - Validation & Simulation to build the test infrastructure, integrate simulation, and develop validation pipelines that let our firmware, controls, and robot runtime teams move fast without breaking robots.

Requirements

• Technical degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience and evidence of exceptional ability.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with fluency in Python and comfort in C/C++ or Rust for debugging at the firmware level.
• Demonstrated experience building validation, simulation, or test infrastructure for real physical systems — robots, motors, actuators, or similar.
• You are comfortable with ambiguity, move fast, and have an "engineering curiosity" that drives you to understand how the entire system works, not just your part.

Nice To Haves

• Experience validating or testing robotics middleware or runtime systems (ROS2 or similar).
• Experience with dynamic modeling or simulation tools (MATLAB/Simulink, MuJoCo, Gazebo, or equivalent) for robotic or actuated systems.
• Familiarity with functional safety standards (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, ISO 26262, or similar) and safety validation processes.
• Comfort with lab equipment (oscilloscopes, power supplies, logic analyzers) and embedded debugging tools (JTAG, SWD).
• Experience with agent-driven coding practices (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) to accelerate test and software development.

Responsibilities

• Design and build automated test suites that validate firmware, controls, and runtime behavior across software-in-the-loop (SIL) environments.
• Integrate simulation environment inputs and dynamic models that stand in for the real robot — including simulated sensor inputs like camera feeds — so runtime and middleware teams can develop without physical hardware.
• Own regression test infrastructure and tooling for result analysis, failure triage, and coverage tracking across firmware, controls, runtime, and hardware.
• Collaborate with firmware, controls, and runtime engineers to define testability requirements and turn real-world failures into repeatable automated test cases.
• Drive validation burn-down during integration and assembly milestones, tracking issues to closure across teams.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree