Staff Autonomy Simulation Platform Engineer

archer56; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 195,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Archer Aviation, based in San Jose, CA, seeks a Staff Autonomy Engineer to advance its all-electric aircraft simulations and data-driven AI testing. You will build the simulation platform, integrate sensor models, and drive scenario generation for real-world validation and ML training.

You will architect the platform, work across a large codebase, and collaborate with flight-test teams to ground simulations in real conditions while shaping the roadmap for future growth.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in simulation, robotics, or backend infrastructure.
• MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent (exceptional B.S. candidates considered).
• Experience architecting simulation or orchestration layers across a large codebase.
• Experience building synthetic data and evaluation pipelines.
• Working knowledge of AI development methods (data flywheels, eval-driven iteration).
• Interest in safety-critical, regulated engineering.

Responsibilities

• Develop simulation environments, aircraft dynamics, sensor models, and the orchestration layer composing scenarios and missions.
• Build tooling for large-scale, procedural, automated scenario generation and rendering.
• Generate synthetic sensor and telemetry data for AI training via physics-based rendering.
• Define evaluation metrics that turn simulation output into data-driven decisions.
• Partner with flight test teams to keep simulated scenarios grounded in real-world conditions.

Skills

Simulation

Robotics

Backend infra

AI methods

Ambiguity tolerance

Safety-critical

Education

MS/PhD in CS/Robotics

Exceptional BS considered

Tools

JSBSim

X-Plane

AirSim

Gazebo

Job description

Archer Aviation, based in San Jose, CA, seeks a Staff Autonomy Engineer to advance its all-electric aircraft simulations and data-driven AI testing. You will build the simulation platform, integrate sensor models, and drive scenario generation for real-world validation and ML training.

You will architect the platform, work across a large codebase, and collaborate with flight-test teams to ground simulations in real conditions while shaping the roadmap for future growth.