Senior GPU Raytracing Engineer

NVIDIA Gruppe; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 184,000 - 356,500; Full time

Job summary

NVIDIA Gruppe is seeking a senior engineer for the Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin team in Santa Clara, California. This role involves leading the design of a GPU-accelerated propagation engine for 5G and 6G network simulation, focusing on real-time algorithms and ray-tracing technologies.

The successful applicant will need a PhD in a related field and over 8 years of relevant experience, particularly in GPU programming with CUDA. Competitive salaries ranging from 184,000 to 287,500 USD based on experience.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in GPU programming.
• Experience with production-quality GPU code.
• Working knowledge of electromagnetic wave propagation phenomena.

Responsibilities

• Lead design of a GPU ray-tracing engine for real-time signal propagation.
• Implement algorithms and data structures for efficient ray tracing.
• Produce volumetric radio maps for network design.

Skills

CUDA

GPU ray-tracing frameworks (OptiX, Vulkan RT, Embree)

Spatial data structures (BVH, space-filling curves, hash maps)

Electromagnetic wave propagation

Real-time ray tracing

Education

PhD in computer graphics or related field

Job description

Overview

We are seeking a self-motivated senior engineer for the Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin team. This hire will lead the design and implementation of a real-time, GPU-accelerated propagation engine that predicts how radio signals travel through realistic 3-D environments—producing both per-link channel characterisations and radio maps at the speed required by production RAN stacks! This position offers the opportunity to work on foundational technology for 5G and 6G network simulation, using NVIDIA's world‑class GPU and ray‑tracing platforms.

What you'll be doing

As a member of NVIDIA's Aerial team, you will architect and implement a GPU ray-tracing engine that operates at two time scales. At the planning scale, the engine produces volumetric radio maps—coverage, SINR, and best-server maps at multiple resolutions, composable across cells, frequencies, and beam configurations—that network operators use to design and optimise deployments. At the real-time scale, the same engine delivers per-link multipath channel updates at the millisecond cadence that a production RAN stack requires, using adaptive algorithms that exploit temporal coherence to avoid recomputing what hasn't changed. Laying the foundations for real-time ray tracing on GPU hardware—algorithms, data structures, and multi-GPU scaling strategies that make sub-millisecond propagation updates feasible is the defining technical challenge of this role.

What we need to see

• PhD in computer graphics, high-performance computing, computational electromagnetics, or a closely related field (or equivalent experience).
• 8+ years of relevant experience.
• Hands-on proficiency with CUDA and at least one GPU ray-tracing framework (OptiX, Vulkan RT, Embree), with a track record of writing production-quality GPU code.
• Proficiency in GPU-friendly spatial data structures (BVH, space-filling curves, hash maps) and the ability to reason about memory hierarchy, occupancy, and compute-vs-bandwidth trade-offs at the kernel level.
• Working knowledge of electromagnetic wave propagation phenomena (reflection, transmission, diffraction, scattering) sufficient to implement and validate a propagation engine.
• Impactful publications in GPU ray tracing, real-time rendering, or deterministic propagation modelling.

Ways to stand out from the crowd

• Experience with real-time or near real-time ray-tracing engines shipping in production systems.
• Prior work on multi-GPU partitioning for ray-tracing or large-scale simulation workloads.
• Familiarity with 3GPP channel models and wireless network planning tools.
• Knowledge of geospatial coordinate systems and tiling schemes.

Compensation

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 184,000 USD-287,500 USD for Level 4, and 224,000 USD-356,500 USD for Level 5. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Application Deadline

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until May 25, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

Equal Opportunity Employer

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law. NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.