Senior Member of Technical Staff: Robot Simulation

Walden Robotics; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual cash bonus

Company equity

Company-subsidized insurance

401(k) with company match

Daily lunch

Job summary

Walden Robotics is seeking a senior, hands-on engineer to build and scale our simulation platform for general-purpose robots. You’ll own core simulator components and tooling to accelerate policy evaluation beyond the speed of the real world.

Collaborate with autonomy and infrastructure teams to make simulation fast, reliable, and easy to use; this role emphasizes hands-on development, performance optimization, and technical leadership.

Qualifications

• Experience in physics, rendering, or robotics simulation.
• Strong Python and/or C++ skills.
• Ability to profile complex systems and take a measurement-driven approach to performance and reliability.
• Track record of leading workstreams and mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a high-fidelity simulation platform for prototyping, testing, and validating robot behaviors.
• Benchmark and optimize rendering, physics, and pipeline execution to accelerate iteration.
• Build scalable evaluation infrastructure that provides reliable training signals.
• Define, measure, and reduce the sim-to-real gap while expanding simulation coverage and realism.
• Mentor simulation engineers and collaborate with autonomy and infrastructure teams.

Skills

Simulation Expertise

Software & Systems Engineering

Performance & Evaluation Rigor

Technical Leadership

Isaac Sim

MuJoCo

Drake

Tools

Isaac Sim

MuJoCo

Drake

Job description

Position Summary:

We’re looking for a senior, hands‑on engineer to build and scale the simulation platform for our general‑purpose robots. You’ll own core simulator and tooling components that let us evaluate and improve policies faster than the real world allows. You’ll work closely with autonomy and infrastructure teams to make simulation fast, reliable, and easy to use.

Core Responsibilities:

• Simulation Development: Build and maintain a high‑fidelity simulation platform for prototyping, testing, and validating robot behaviors.
• Performance & Scalability: Establish benchmarks and optimize rendering, physics, and pipeline execution to accelerate iteration and increase throughput.
• Evaluation Infrastructure: Build scalable evaluation infrastructure that produces reliable training signals and enables iteration beyond the speed of real‑world testing.
• Coverage & Realism: Define, measure, and reduce the sim‑to‑real gap while expanding simulation coverage and realism.
• Collaboration & Mentorship: Partner with autonomy and infrastructure teams and mentor simulation engineers.

Required Qualifications:

• Simulation Expertise: Strong background in physics, rendering, or robotics simulation, with hands‑on experience developing on platforms such as Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or Drake.
• Software & Systems Engineering: Strong Python and/or C++ skills, with experience building and maintaining production‑grade, high‑performance parallel systems.
• Performance & Evaluation Rigor: Ability to profile complex systems, diagnose bottlenecks, and take a measurement‑driven approach to performance, reliability, evaluation, and the sim‑to‑real gap.
• Technical Leadership: Sound engineering judgment, clear communication, and a track record of leading workstreams, mentoring engineers, and raising technical standards.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience running containerized simulation workloads in the cloud with scalable, parallel job execution.
• Experience generating synthetic simulation assets, environments, and evaluation scenarios through procedural generation, generative modeling, or agentic authoring.
• Familiarity with GPU‑accelerated simulation or rendering.

Walden Robotics offers a competitive total compensation program, including salary, annual cash bonus, company equity, company‑subsidized insurance programs, 401(k) with company match, flexible PTO, daily lunch, and other benefits. The pay ranges noted on our posts are for salary only.

Walden Robotics is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [e-mail].

Walden Robotics participates in E‑Verify. If you receive an offer of employment from Walden, you will need to go through the E‑Verify process of digital verification of your employment authorization documents as provided on the Form I‑9. Participation in E‑Verify does not limit your right to work and verification will only be completed after you become