Senior Simulation Engineer
Toyota Research Instituteover 1 year ago
Los Altos, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$180k - $259k/yr
Responsibilities
- Build a visually realistic simulator covering sensors, motion planning, and end-to-end autonomy behavior across diverse scenarios.
- Prototype and integrate internal and third-party simulators for learned-system testing.
- Curate scenarios and system introspection capabilities.
- Build data-logging frameworks for large-scale virtual tests.
- Define simulation entry points, runtime configurations, and closed-loop evaluation metrics with autonomy, ML, and integration teams.
- Develop diagnostic tooling and analysis pipelines to understand and improve real-system behavior in simulation.
- Lead efforts to reduce the gap between simulation and on-vehicle deployment and improve simulation-based validation reliability.
- Provide technical mentorship and foster collaboration across organizational boundaries.
- Create technical designs and documentation, deliver technical presentations, and align with stakeholders throughout implementation.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, robotics, or a related field.
- 10+ years of experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or simulation.
- Experience with 3D reconstruction, including techniques such as Gaussian Splatting and Neural Radiance Fields.
- Experience with 3D generation and Unreal Engine.
- Strong Python and C++ programming skills for robotics or systems development.
- Experience integrating simulation platforms such as CARLA, Applied Intuition, or Nvidia DriveSim into autonomous-system workflows.
- Knowledge of sensor simulation principles and perception-system interactions with synthetic data.
- Understanding of end-to-end autonomy pipelines from raw sensor input through trajectory outputs.
- Ability to design for autonomy developers and simulation-infrastructure stakeholders.
- Preferred experience validating machine-learning-based autonomy stacks in closed-loop simulation.
- Preferred knowledge of scenario generation, rare-event simulation, counterfactual testing, multi-agent simulation, or high-fidelity 3D environments.
- Knowledge of cloud compute platforms such as AWS is preferred.
- Prior experience in fast-paced R&D environments bridging research and production is preferred.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- 401(k) eligibility.
- Paid time off, including vacation, sick time, and parental leave.
- Annual cash bonus structure.
- California-based base pay range of $180,000-$258,750 per year.
- The role involves collaboration across TRI, Woven by Toyota, and other engineering partners.
About Toyota Research Institute
Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is Toyota’s U.S.-based R&D subsidiary building AI, robotics, and automated driving technologies for future Toyota vehicles and mobility products. It also conducts materials discovery for batteries and hydrogen fuel cells and develops assistive home robotics. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Los Altos, California, TRI delivers research, software, and prototypes that feed Toyota’s product roadmaps through close collaboration with internal teams and external research partners.