Embodied AI Real2Sim Engineer
Santa Clara, CAFull-timePosted todayStill listed today
Most applications go out cold — see where you stand first. No sign-up to start.
You apply on the employer's site, with no Olive account needed.
Watch jobs like this. New roles like this one near Santa Clara, CA, by email.
Don't just apply. Show up ready.
Olive works from this exact posting.
At a glance
Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.
Job overview
The Embodied AI Real2Sim Engineer builds a pipeline that reconstructs and calibrates robots, objects, and scenes for simulation, delivering interactive SimReady assets to support algorithm training, evaluation, and policy transfer to hardware. The role develops calibration and asset-quality tools, measures sim-to-real mismatches, and works with perception, robot learning, simulation, and hardware teams to improve calibration protocols and asset standards.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Benefits
Full job description
Job Description: Core Objective: Build the digital pipeline from the real world to simulation space. Reconstruct and calibrate visual and physical properties of robots, objects and scenes, and deliver SimReady interactive assets to reduce the sim-to-real gap, supporting algorithm training, simulation evaluation and policy transfer to real hardware.
Responsibilities
-
Own the end-to-end Real2Sim workflow based on Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Genesis, Blender and other simulation platforms, including 3D reconstruction, appearance reconstruction, dynamic identification, calibration of contact, friction and inertia parameters, to align dynamic and perceptual behaviors between simulation and real robots.
-
Create, validate and iterate SimReady assets following USD / URDF / MJCF standards. Configure joints, collision shapes, mass/inertia, joint limits, semantic labels and affordance properties for robots and interactive objects, to achieve physical parameter calibration of simulation assets, ensuring stable usability in simulation training.
-
Process multi-modal real-world captured data: camera calibration, point cloud & mesh processing, texture and PBR material calibration. Leverage 3DGS / NeRF and related reconstruction methods to digitize real scenes and export assets compatible with simulation engines.
-
Develop automated tools for calibration, data processing and asset quality inspection. Document asset specifications, calibration workflows and evaluation metrics to improve pipeline throughput and sim-real alignment accuracy.
-
Collaborate with perception, robot learning, simulation engine and hardware teams, design quantitative sim-real benchmark experiments, identify simulation bias, and continuously improve calibration protocols and asset standards for closed-loop data iteration.
-
Design excitation trajectories for robot system identification, collect time-series dynamic data from physical robots, calibrate and reproduce non-ideal dynamic behaviors including nonlinear joint friction and transmission backlash.
Requirements Must-have
-
Proficiency in at least one simulation/graphics tool such as Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Genesis or Blender, with solid understanding of computer graphics and rigid-body dynamics. Familiar with physics simulation engines such as PhysX and Newton.
-
Hands-on experience with Real2Sim pipelines and SimReady asset standards; capable of independently building, configuring and validating robot or object assets including joint setup and physical property tuning.
-
Knowledge of 3D reconstruction, camera imaging, point cloud processing and camera calibration; fundamental understanding of system identification, parameter calibration and contact/friction models for physical simulation. Familiar with PBR rendering and material creation.
-
Ability to decompose requirements, implement technical solutions, run comparative experiments and root-cause sim-real mismatches from visual reconstruction or physical simulation.
-
Capable of designing dynamic system identification experiments, analyzing measured hardware data, and quantifying sim-real errors introduced by nonlinear dynamics.
Nice-to-have
-
Proven track record delivering Real2Sim projects, especially for robotic arms, dexterous hands or humanoid robots.
-
Deep familiarity with USD / URDF / MJCF, experience building asset libraries and automated asset validation pipelines.
-
Skilled in Python / C++ for calibration scripts, engine extensions and data processing tools.
-
Experience with 3DGS, NeRF, PBR reconstruction and photogrammetry.
-
Background in system identification, excitation trajectory design, dynamic parameter estimation and contact model tuning.
-
Understanding of Sim2Real, reinforcement learning and embodied AI closed-loop systems.
-
Experience with motion capture, multi-sensor calibration and real robot hardware experiments.
-
Familiar with nonlinear friction models such as LuGre and Stribeck, with experience modeling and tuning joint hysteresis and backlash.
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 528 open Simulation Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 6, 2026.
- Pay
- This postingNot listed
- California median$150–232K/yr131 salary ranges
- US median$31–95/hr22 hourly ranges
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 175 open Simulation Engineer jobs in California and 528 across the US. 5% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Experience
- Simulation Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years of experience at the median; the middle half ask for 3 to 6 years (423 postings).
- Education
- 204 of the 528 open Simulation Engineer jobs (39%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 6, 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.
Prepare for this role
You've read the whole posting — now see how you match it.


