Senior / Staff Sim-to-Real Engineer
Required skills
- tendon-driven robotic hands
- RL policies
- physical hardware
- system identification
- empirical testing
- actuator characterization
- rigid multi-body calibration
- kinematic calibration
- inertial identification
- effort production verification
Nice to have
- locomotion
- whole-body control
- MuJoCo
- Isaac Sim/Gym
- Drake
- Bullet
Role summary
Apptronik seeks a Senior/Staff Sim-to-Real Engineer to develop accurate physical abstractions for complex tendon-driven robotic hands in simulation. This role involves designing empirical testing protocols for system identification and validation, characterizing actuators, and calibrating multi-body systems. You will own the sim-to-real pipeline, ensuring successful transfer of RL policies to physical hardware, and provide technical leadership to drive the sim-to-real engineering culture. The ideal candidate has 5+ years of experience in robotics, controls, or physical simulation, with a proven track record in sim-to-real transfer and system identification of QDD actuators.
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 Applied 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 looking for an experienced and autonomous Senior/Staff Sim-to-Real Engineer to bridge the gap between simulation and physical hardware for our advanced tendon-driven robotic hands.
Simulating tendon-driven mechanisms is notoriously difficult due to complex routing, friction, elasticity, and non-linear transmission dynamics. In this role, you will be responsible for creating elegant, highly accurate abstractions of these complex mechanisms for our simulators, and proving they work through rigorous empirical testing and system identification.
You will play a critical role in our control pipeline, ensuring that Reinforcement Learning (RL) policies trained in simulation successfully transfer to physical hardware. As a senior member of the team, you will have the autonomy to define our system identification roadmap, establish testing protocols, and drive the sim-to-real engineering culture.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES or KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS
EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE
Senior Engineer:
Staff Engineer:
Preferred Qualifications
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
*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.
