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VLA Algorithm Engineer – Simulation Data Generation & World Models

Maxinsights

Santa Clara, CAFull-timePosted 1w agoStill listed 6 days ago

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At a glance

Compensation
No compensation found
Location
Santa Clara, CA
Schedule
Full-time
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Job overview

Maxinsights is seeking a VLA Algorithm Engineer to advance embodied AI foundation models at the intersection of robotics, simulation, and world models. The engineer will build robotic simulation environments and synthetic training-data pipelines, contribute to model training, and improve transfer from simulation to real-world robots. The role focuses on robotics, reinforcement and imitation learning, multimodal sensing, and robust evaluation across real-world environments.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Robotics SimulationRobotic LearningAlgorithm DevelopmentReinforcement LearningImitation LearningSystem IdentificationWorld Models3D VisionSimulation Platform DevelopmentSynthetic Data GenerationData Generation PipelinesDiffusion ModelsSim-to-Real TransferPolicy TransferDynamics AdaptationObservation Adaptation

Qualifications

1+ Years Relevant Experience

Benefits

Medical Insurance
Vision Insurance
Dental Insurance
401(k) Match
Paid Time Off

Full job description

Job Description: About the Role We're looking for a VLA Algorithm Engineer working at the intersection of robotics, simulation, and world models to help advance our embodied AI foundation models. You'll build and optimize robotic simulation environments, develop large-scale synthetic training data pipelines, and improve how models trained in simulation transfer to real-world robots. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys tackling challenging problems in robotics, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and 3D vision, and wants to help build more capable, robust, and generalizable robotic systems.

Key Responsibilities

  • Robotics Simulation: Build and optimize simulation environments for robotic tasks, including manipulation, navigation, mobile manipulation, and humanoid robotics.

  • Embodied AI Foundation Models: Contribute to the training and optimization of embodied AI foundation models, including pretraining on large-scale egocentric human video and real-world robot data.

  • Multimodal Learning: Design approaches for incorporating multimodal inputs, including force and tactile sensing, and develop, train, evaluate, and optimize models that integrate these signals.

  • Simulation & Evaluation Infrastructure: Improve simulation and evaluation pipelines to reduce the sim-to-real gap and enhance model stability, robustness, and generalization across real-world environments.

Required Qualifications

  • At least 1 year of relevant professional experience or research experience in robotics, simulation, system identification, reinforcement learning (RL), imitation learning (IL), world models, 3D vision, or a related field.

  • Experience with robotics simulation, robotic learning, or related algorithm development.

  • Strong understanding of at least one relevant research area, such as reinforcement learning, imitation learning, system identification, world models, or 3D computer vision.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Simulation Platform Development: Hands-on experience developing or extending simulation platforms, with familiarity with the underlying architecture of tools such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Orbit, MuJoCo, PyBullet, or Genesis.

  • Large-Scale Synthetic Data Generation: Experience building synthetic datasets for robotics or computer vision, developing scalable data generation pipelines, or using diffusion models for large-scale synthetic data generation.

  • Sim-to-Real Transfer: Demonstrated experience transferring reinforcement learning or imitation learning policies from simulation to physical robotic arms or mobile robots. Familiarity with addressing simulation-to-reality differences in dynamics and observations through systematic compensation or adaptation techniques is a plus.

Default Benefits:

  • Health insurance

  • Vision care

  • Dental coverage

  • 401(k)

  • Paid holidays

  • PTO (Paid Time Off)

  • Sick leave

How this job compares

Set against the 508 open Simulation Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 3, 2026.

Pay
  • This postingNot listed
  • California median$150–233K/yr131 salary ranges
  • US median$31–91/hr23 hourly ranges
Openings
Olive Jobs lists 173 open Simulation Engineer jobs in California and 508 across the US. 5% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for at least 1 year of experience — less than three in four Simulation Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 5 years, across 411 postings).
Education
212 of the 508 open Simulation Engineer jobs (42%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 3, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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