Staff Software Engineer - Robotic Simulation

Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond.

We operate at the cutting edge of embodied AI, applying our expertise across the full robotics stack to solve some of society's most important problems. You will join a team dedicated to bringing Apollo to market at scale, tackling the complex challenges like safety, commercialization, and mass production to change the world for the better.

JOB SUMMARY

We are seeking a Staff Simulation Engineer to spearhead the architecture and development of our core simulation infrastructure—the engine that powers our reinforcement learning and controls initiatives. In this role, you will be responsible for the continuous development, improvement, and maintenance of our simulation environments, scaling the platform to be robust, high-performance, and highly parallelized. You will own the technical roadmap for our simulation tools, ensuring seamless integration with robot control systems and learning frameworks to provide our teams with the foundational infrastructure needed to develop next-generation autonomous behaviors.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES or KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Simulation Infrastructure: Own the technical roadmap and architecture of the core simulation platform, building high-performance digital twins that serve as the foundation for Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model training, controls validation, and CI/CD integration testing.

• Massively Parallel Infrastructure: Design and scale cloud-native simulation pipelines capable of generating millions of experience hours per day, leveraging distributed computing frameworks to parallelize physics and rendering for rapid policy iteration.

• High-Fidelity Sim-to-Real Transfer: Bridge the reality gap by developing advanced contact models and actuator dynamics, ensuring that policies trained in simulation transfer zero-shot to physical humanoid hardware.

• Photorealistic Perception & World Building: Lead the development of sensor-realistic environments (camera, LiDAR, depth) that challenge the perception stack, creating the dynamic and diverse worlds necessary to robustify robot vision capabilities.

• Technical Strategy & Leadership: Serve as the technical authority on simulation, collaborating with Control and AI research teams to anticipate future needs and drive the evolution of tools.

SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS:

• Excellent C++ and Python programming skills

• Familiar with best practices for software development, including CI/CD, automated testing, and code quality standards to ensure a robust and scalable codebase.

• Technical leadership experience in robotic simulation, including defining technical roadmaps and collaborating cross-functionally to align priorities and drive project execution.

• Understanding of Robotics concepts like kinematics, dynamics, controls, path planning and system identification.

• Experience with modern robotic simulators, like IsaacLab and MuJoCo.

• Understanding of Reinforcement Learning and VLAs with preferable experience in research or production environment

• Experience architecting and managing large-scale training workloads, including deploying parallel simulations on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) with distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Ray, Kubernetes).

• Familiarity with the use of game engines like Unity or Unreal.

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE:

• Education: MS or PhD in relevant fields (Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, etc.)

• Experience: Significant experience (8+ years or 5+ with a graduate degree) in developing robotic simulations for high-performance, contact-rich, and dynamic robotic environments.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer

• Must be able to lift 15 pounds at times

• Vision to read printed materials and a computer screen

• Hearing and speech to communicate

*This is a direct hire. Please, no outside Agency solicitations.

Apptronik provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.