Staff Simulation Engineer - Core Simulation Platform

Apptronik • Austin, TX

15h

About The Position

Apptronik is hiring a Staff Simulation Engineer for its Core Simulation Platform. The engineer will contribute to the architecture and development of a high-performance simulation platform that supports robot policy training, controls validation, and CI/CD integration testing. The platform must support reinforcement learning workloads, provide accurate validation, and remain robust, performant, and highly parallel.

The role includes helping scale cloud-native simulation pipelines, improving sim-to-real transfer through contact models and actuator dynamics, and developing sensor-realistic environments for camera, LiDAR, and depth perception. The engineer will work with Controls, AI Research, and Perception teams to meet evolving simulation needs and deliver improvements that reduce iteration time. The position requires strong C++ and/or Python skills, robotics fundamentals, experience with modern simulators, and familiarity with large-scale training workloads and distributed computing.

Requirements

• Excellent C++ and/or Python programming skills.
• Familiarity with software development best practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, and code quality standards.
• Understanding of robotics concepts, including kinematics, dynamics, controls, and system identification.
• Experience with modern robotic simulators such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or equivalent.
• Understanding of Reinforcement Learning and VLAs, with research or production experience.
• Experience with large-scale training workloads, including deploying parallel simulations on cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure with distributed computing frameworks such as Ray or Kubernetes.
• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 5 years of experience in robotic simulation, software engineering, or related fields.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the architecture and development of the core simulation platform and high-performance digital twins for policy training, controls validation, and CI/CD integration testing.
• Help build and scale cloud-native simulation pipelines capable of generating millions of experience hours per day.
• Parallelize physics and rendering to enable rapid policy iteration.
• Improve sim-to-real transfer through advanced contact models and actuator dynamics.
• Develop sensor-realistic environments for camera, LiDAR, and depth perception.
• Deliver platform improvements that reduce iteration time for reinforcement learning, controls, and perception teams.
• Work with Controls, AI Research, and Perception teams to support their evolving simulation needs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior