Senior Simulation & Autonomy Engineer

San Diego, United States | Posted on 06/15/2026

Location: San Diego, United States

Compensation: $185,000/year

Employment Type: Full-Time

US Citizenship required; background check and drug screen required

Lead the integration of autonomy codebases into synthetictestbeds and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) setups for unmanned surface vessels(USVs). Build simulators that exercise onboard autonomy, sensors, and control loops end-to-end.

• Integrate autonomy software — navigation, planning,control, and perception pipelines — with simulators and CI/HITL test infrastructure.
• Design, implement, and maintain physics-consistent synthetic environments that align dynamics, sensor models, state-estimation,and render/update loops for realistic closed-loop testing.
• Develop and validate sensor models (GNSS, IMU, DVL, radar,lidar, camera) and measurement noise models; tune them against real-vehicle logs.
• Implement and test state estimation (EKF/UKF/particle filters) and perception algorithms in the loop; quantify performance and failure modes.
• Create repeatable test scenarios, automated test harnesses, and performance metrics for autonomy regression testing.
• Collaborate with software, controls, and UX teams toensure simulation outputs match onboard expectations and support debugging viareplay, logging, and visualization.
• Support CI pipelines: containerized sims, scenario libraries, test orchestration, and result dashboards.
• Mentor junior engineers; produce documentation and reproducible experiment artifacts.

• BS or MS in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent.
• 5+ years of experience in robotics, autonomy, or software integration with demonstrable work on simulation and state estimation.
• Strong C++ and/or Python proficiency; experience withROS/ROS2 and/or middleware used in robotics systems.
• Hands-on experience with state estimation tools(EKF/UKF/particle filters), sensor fusion, and perception stacks.
• Experience building or integrating simulators (Gazebo,Webots, Mu Jo Co , Unity/Unreal integrations, custom C++/Python sim).
• Strong understanding of rigid-body dynamics, numerical integration, and discrete-time control loops.
• Experience with version control, CI/CD, Docker, and automated testing frameworks.
• Comfortable working with real vehicle logs, calibrations,and sensor synchronization.

• Prior USV or maritime robotics experience.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL/HITL) andreal-time systems.
• Familiarity with Unreal Engine or Unity for high-fidelity simulation.
• Experience with GPU-based sensor simulation (ray tracing,lidar simulation).
• Experience with data visualization and UI integrations fortest playback.

• Clear communicator; collaborative with product and UXteams.
• Pragmatic engineer who prioritizes reproducible,measurable tests.
• Comfortable operating in a startup or hardware-in-the-loop environment.