Software Engineer, Simulation & Evaluation — Autonomous

Saildrone; Alameda (CA); On-site; USD 145,000 - 323,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PTO and holidays

Health coverage

Equity

401(k)

Professional development

Relocation support

Job summary

Saildrone is developing autonomous unmanned surface vehicles for maritime defense. This role focuses on building the simulation, replay, resimulation, and evaluation infrastructure that lets engineers replay real-world data, simulate autonomous behavior, measure performance, and turn failures into repeatable tests.

You will connect recorded vehicle data with simulated environments and production autonomy software, create regression tests, and develop quantitative evaluation pipelines used by

Qualifications

• Strong C++ software engineering skills and experience building production systems.
• Experience with simulation, emulation, replay, resimulation, hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, or comparable robotics testing infrastructure.
• Strong systems fundamentals, including concurrency, performance, reliability, and Linux.
• Experience building quantitative evaluation or validation systems.
• Understanding of simulation fidelity and the limitations of simulated or replayed behavior.
• Experience building infrastructure used by other engineers.
• Strong communication skills to partner with stakeholders across teams

Responsibilities

• Build production-quality simulation, replay, resimulation, and evaluation infrastructure for autonomous systems.
• Discuss pain points with simulation users to understand what is difficult to express in the scenario definitions, what’s difficult to maintain and propose and implement solutions.
• Connect recorded vehicle data, simulated environments, and production autonomy software into repeatable test workflows.
• Develop open-loop and closed-loop testing for autonomous behavior.
• Build quantitative metrics, evaluation pipelines, and regression tests.
• Turn real-world failures and edge cases into repeatable scenarios and automated tests.
• Analyze logs, telemetry, simulation results, and test failures to identify root causes.
• Integrate simulation and evaluation into the software development lifecycle.

Skills

C++

Robotics testing infra

Systems programming

Linux

Concurrency

Validation systems

Technical communication

Job description

Saildrone is developing autonomous unmanned surface vehicles for maritime defense. This role focuses on building the simulation, replay, resimulation, and evaluation infrastructure that lets engineers replay real-world data, simulate autonomous behavior, measure performance, and turn failures into repeatable tests.

You will connect recorded vehicle data with simulated environments and production autonomy software, create regression tests, and develop quantitative evaluation pipelines used by