XR Experience Engineer

Walden Robotics, Inc.; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k) with company match

Insurance programs

Flexible PTO

Daily lunch

Job summary

Walden Robotics seeks an engineer to design and build the in-headset experience for long sessions with its robot teleoperation systems. You own the operator-facing UX, takeovers, and comfort metrics to ensure safe, efficient remote operation.

You will prototype in-engine, balance aesthetics with performance, and collaborate with AI, robotics, and graphics teams to ship tested features for production runtimes and real-world field use.

Qualifications

• ,

Responsibilities

• In-Headset Interface: Design and build spatial UI for robot status, policy state and uncertainty, safety affordances, calibration and session flows.
• Shared Autonomy UX: Design takeover and handback so control transitions feel continuous to operator and on-robot user.
• Comfort and Awareness: Own comfort features and sickness mitigation from the experience side, provide situational awareness.
• Instrumentation and Studies: Build telemetry for comfort, fatigue, task success and workload; run structured sessions with operators; ship changes.
• Rapid Prototyping: Prototype interaction ideas in-engine within days; land them in production runtime with teleop engineers.
• Performance-Aware Design: Balance visual quality with framerate, power and latency budgets; validate with profiling data.
• Audio Experience: Build operator audio, including spatial audio and push-to-talk, with robot-side engineers on capture and transport.
• Testing and Release Quality: Write unit, integration and end-to-end tests; help sign off builds for promotion to operators.
• Field Support: Diagnose field issues including headset management (ManageXR); adjust device settings as needed.
• Prototyping Partnership: Lead time-boxed prototypes with external XR studio and Walden designers; decide what moves to production.

Skills

XR Interaction Design

Unity/C#

Unreal

VR Comfort

User Research

Collaboration

Performance vs Aesthetics

AI Coding Tools

Tools

OpenXR

ManageXR

Claude Code

Cursor

Copilot

Job description

You will design and build the experience a remote assistant lives in for hours at a time inside a Walden robot. You own the in-headset interface: what the operator sees and hears about the robot and its autonomy, how they take over and hand back control, and how comfortable and aware they stay across a long session. You are an engineer who designs, prototyping directly in the headset rather than handing off mockups, and you close the loop with instrumentation and time spent with the people who teleoperate every day. In a system where every millisecond and milliwatt counts, you understand the tradeoffs between aesthetics and performance, and you propose implementation plans and alternatives that meet UX needs while protecting framerate, power and latency. You'll also help keep the app shippable, writing tests and helping sign off releases alongside our release engineers.

Core Responsibilities:

• In-Headset Interface: Design and build spatial UI for robot status, policy state and uncertainty, safety affordances, calibration and session flows.
• Shared Autonomy UX: With the AI and teleoperation teams, design takeover and handback so control transitions feel continuous to both the remote operator and the person in front of the robot.
• Comfort and Awareness: Own comfort features and sickness mitigation from the experience side, and give operators the situational awareness to work confidently.
• Instrumentation and Studies: Build telemetry for comfort, fatigue, task success and workload; run structured sessions with operators and turn findings into shipped changes.
• Rapid Prototyping: Prototype interaction ideas in-engine within days, and work with the core teleop engineers to land them in the production runtime.
• Performance-Aware Design: Weigh visual quality against performance for every UX change, propose implementation plans and alternatives that satisfy UX needs, and protect the system's framerate, power and latency budgets, validating choices with profiling data.
• Audio Experience: Build the operator's audio experience, including spatial audio and push-to-talk, working with robot-side engineers on capture and transport.
• Testing and Release Quality: Write unit, integration and end-to-end tests for the operator application, including automated runs against simulation, and help sign off builds for promotion to operators, working with our release and infrastructure engineers.
• Field Support: Help diagnose issues in the field, including ones tied to headset device management (for example ManageXR), and adjust device settings when needed.
• Prototyping Partnership: Plan and direct time-boxed prototyping cycles with our external XR studio and Walden designers: write the briefs, run the reviews with operators, and decide which ideas move into production.

Required Qualifications:

• XR Interaction Design and Engineering: Shipped VR or AR experiences where you built the interaction and UI yourself.
• Engine Proficiency: Strong Unity/C#, Unreal or equivalent real-time 3D engine skills on standalone headsets.
• Human Factors: Working knowledge of VR comfort (vergence-accommodation, locomotion and latency-induced sickness) and spatial UI legibility.
• User Research Practice: Experience running user sessions and turning qualitative and quantitative feedback into design decisions.
• Collaboration: Comfort working across robotics, AI and graphics engineers.
• Performance vs. Aesthetics Judgment: A clear understanding of how UI, rendering and effects cost frame time and power on standalone headsets, and a track record of finding designs that look good without breaking performance targets.
• AI-Assisted Development: Experience using AI coding tools (for example Claude Code, Cursor or Copilot) to prototype and iterate faster.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with teleoperation, remote operation consoles or other expert, high-workload interfaces.
• Familiarity with OpenXR and hand or eye tracking input.
• Background in HCI, human factors or cognitive load measurement.
• Experience with haptic feedback design.
• Spatial audio for XR.
• Automated testing of XR or game applications, including end-to-end tests.
• Managed headset fleets (for example ManageXR).

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 an employee with Walden Robotics.

At Walden Robotics, we envision a world where general-purpose robots dramatically improve the quality of life for all people—supporting us at home, at work, in factories, on farms, and beyond. To accomplish this, we are building a team of exceptional professionals who combine world-class technical skills with creative vision, grounded in humility and collaboration.