Applied Scientist II - Robotics Simulation & RL

Amazon; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 143,000 - 193,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon.com Services LLC is seeking an Applied Scientist to join the Robotics Simulation team. You will design, build, and validate simulation environments and policy training pipelines enabling robots to learn manipulation and mobility skills in simulation and transfer them to real hardware.

You will own simulation science deliverables end-to-end, contribute to design discussions, and help establish best practices for robot learning in simulation, partnering with SDEs, Technical Artists and

Qualifications

• PhD or master's degree in a relevant field.
• 2+ years of experience with physics simulation platforms for robot learning.
• Demonstrated experience training robot policies using RL or imitation learning and evaluating them in simulation.
• Experience with articulated robot simulation, URDF/MJCF/USD formats and rigid/soft body dynamics.
• Familiarity with sim-to-real transfer concepts (domain randomization, system identification, or physics calibration).

Responsibilities

• Design and implement GPU-accelerated reinforcement learning and imitation learning environments for manipulation and mobility tasks.
• Build and maintain policy training pipelines and evaluate trained policies in simulation.
• Characterize sim-to-real gaps and implement targeted improvements.
• Develop domain randomization strategies to improve policy robustness and transfer to real hardware.
• Create robot embodiment validation tests to ensure digital twins match real hardware.
• Collaborate with SDEs, Technical Artists, and partner science teams to meet training requirements.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

Imitation learning

Sim-to-real transfer

Policy deployment

Policy evaluation in sim

GPU-accelerated RL environments

Domain randomization

System identification

Physics calibration

Contact dynamics modeling

Trajectory optimization

Education

PhD, or Master's degree

Tools

MuJoCo

Isaac Sim

PyBullet

Drake

NVIDIA Isaac Lab/Sim

Omniverse

USD workflows

ROS2

MoveIt

OMPL

Job description

Amazon.com Services LLC is seeking an Applied Scientist to join the Robotics Simulation team. You will design, build, and validate simulation environments and policy training pipelines enabling robots to learn manipulation and mobility skills in simulation and transfer them to real hardware.

You will own simulation science deliverables end-to-end, contribute to design discussions, and help establish best practices for robot learning in simulation, partnering with SDEs, Technical Artists and