Simulation Engineer - Design and Behavior - Dexterity
Location: Austin, TX
Department: Software Engineering
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 Simulation Engineer to own the "Design-to-Simulation" loop for our next-generation dexterous hands.
In this role, you will be the bridge between Mechanical Design and Control. You will be responsible for ingesting new hand designs into the simulation environment, constructing high-fidelity interaction scenes, and implementing the teleoperation pipelines that allow us to validate human-like dexterity before a single part is machined. You will directly impact the design of our hardware by iteratively validating capability in the digital twin.
Furthermore, you will enable the development of next-generation dexterity by using these simulated hands to train and test advanced manipulation behaviors. You will collaborate with the Controls teams to prototype contact-rich skills—such as finger gaiting, sliding, and in-hand reorientation—ensuring that our hardware designs are not just mechanically sound, but capability-ready for complex, autonomous tasks.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Asset Pipeline & USD Integration: Champion the "Design-to-Sim" workflow. Develop tooling to rapidly convert CAD into Universal Scene Description (USD) assets with accurate collision meshes, joint limits, and kinematic parameters optimized for Isaac Sim.
- Evaluation Scene Construction: Design and implement the evaluation environments in Isaac Lab, including the multiple dexterity benchmarks and scenarios. You will own the modeling of the physical properties for high-fidelity photorealistic dynamic simulation.
- Teleoperation & Retargeting Integration: Implement and maintain the interface between human input devices (VR gloves, controllers) and the simulated hand. You will ensure the teleoperation stack performs identically on simulated hands as it does on real hardware.
- Workspace & Kinematic Analysis: Create automated analysis tools via Python scripting in Isaac Sim to visualize reachable workspace and manipulability ellipsoids for new hand designs immediately upon import.
- Sim-to-Real Validation: Partner with the hardware team to iteratively measure and reduce the sim-to-real gap. You will run side-by-side comparisons of grasping stability to tune simulation parameters until they match reality.
SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS:
- Simulation Mastery: Deep experience with modern robotics simulators, like Isaac Sim or MuJoCo.
- USD Proficiency: Strong understanding of the Universal Scene Description (USD) file format, including composition arcs, layers, and stages.
- Coding Proficiency: Strong Python skills for scripting, pipeline automation, and data analysis. Proficiency in C++ is a plus.
- Robotics Fundamentals: Solid understanding of kinematics, rigid body dynamics, collision geometry generation, and spatial math.
- Collaborative Mindset: Ability to be the communication bridge between the hardware design team and the end-users on the software team.
EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE:
- MS or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or related fields, 2+ years of experience working with robotic simulation.
*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.
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