Simulation and Validation Software Engineer

Department: Software Engineering

Location: Palo Alto

Employment Type: FullTime

About Mind:

Mind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems. Join us if you want to move beyond digital intelligence and put intelligence into motion.

About the team and the role:

At Mind Robotics, we're building generalized physical AI — robotic systems capable of dexterous, adaptive, and reasoning-intensive work in real-world industrial environments. Validation is how we make sure our robots actually work — not just once on a bench, but every time, on every robot, in the field. Closing the gap between simulation, hardware test, and the real robot is what makes that reliability possible.

We're looking for a Software Engineer - Validation & Simulation to build the test infrastructure, integrate simulation, and develop validation pipelines that let our firmware, controls, and robot runtime teams move fast without breaking robots.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build automated test suites that validate firmware, controls, and runtime behavior across software-in-the-loop (SIL) environments.

• Integrate simulation environment inputs and dynamic models that stand in for the real robot — including simulated sensor inputs like camera feeds — so runtime and middleware teams can develop without physical hardware.

• Own regression test infrastructure and tooling for result analysis, failure triage, and coverage tracking across firmware, controls, runtime, and hardware.

• Collaborate with firmware, controls, and runtime engineers to define testability requirements and turn real-world failures into repeatable automated test cases.

• Drive validation burn-down during integration and assembly milestones, tracking issues to closure across teams.

Requirements:

• Technical degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience and evidence of exceptional ability.

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with fluency in Python and comfort in C/C++ or Rust for debugging at the firmware level.

• Demonstrated experience building validation, simulation, or test infrastructure for real physical systems — robots, motors, actuators, or similar.

• You are comfortable with ambiguity, move fast, and have an "engineering curiosity" that drives you to understand how the entire system works, not just your part.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience validating or testing robotics middleware or runtime systems (ROS2 or similar).

• Experience with dynamic modeling or simulation tools (MATLAB/Simulink, MuJoCo, Gazebo, or equivalent) for robotic or actuated systems.

• Familiarity with functional safety standards (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, ISO 26262, or similar) and safety validation processes.

• Comfort with lab equipment (oscilloscopes, power supplies, logic analyzers) and embedded debugging tools (JTAG, SWD).

• Experience with agent-driven coding practices (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) to accelerate test and software development.