Staff Data Scientist: Robotic Motion AI Simulation

Intuitive Surgical, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 183,000 - 309,000; Full time

Job summary

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in San Francisco is seeking a Staff Data Scientist - Simulation Motion AI to lead the design of scalable simulation-data systems for training and evaluating robotic policies.

You will collaborate with foundation and policy model teams, test, regulatory, product and clinical teams to generate data and test algorithms at scale for motion AI products. Requires a PhD or Master’s and 9+ years (or 4+ years with PhD).

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s in CS, robotics, ML, or related field.
• 9+ years of industry experience in simulation, ML, robotics, CV, or 4+ years with a PhD.
• Experience with NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Isaac Lab, MuJoCo or equivalent robotics simulation platform.
• Expertise in creating custom simulation environments, sensors, tasks, rewards, and scene generation.
• Proficiency in Python and PyTorch.
• Experience deploying or validating models on physical robotic systems.

Responsibilities

• Architect scalable pipelines for generating synthetic and procedurally varied robotic data using Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or similar simulators.
• Build scalable simulation environments covering data generation, ML, and domain randomization strategies.
• Define data-generation curricula progressing from simple actions to long-horizon robotic tasks.
• Generate recovery data for rare safety-relevant conditions (failed grasps, tracking loss, etc.).
• Design systems to replay, perturb, relabel, and extend real-world trajectories in simulation.
• Establish provenance, metadata, versioning, and reproducibility standards for simulated datasets.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

Robotics

Machine learning

Simulation

Data science

Kinematics & dynamics

Research & development

Education

PhD in CS/Robotics/ML

Master’s in CS/Robotics

Tools

NVIDIA Isaac Sim

NVIDIA Isaac Lab

MuJoCo

Custom robotics simulators

Job description

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in San Francisco is seeking a Staff Data Scientist - Simulation Motion AI to lead the design of scalable simulation-data systems for training and evaluating robotic policies.

You will collaborate with foundation and policy model teams, test, regulatory, product and clinical teams to generate data and test algorithms at scale for motion AI products. Requires a PhD or Master’s and 9+ years (or 4+ years with PhD).