Senior Robotics Research Engineer, Robotics and AI for Drug Discovery
$184k - $288k • Remote • US, CA, Santa Clara
Posted 1d ago
Job Location
US, CA, Santa Clara
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
Fully remote
Categories
Machine Learning Engineer
About the job
NVIDIA is seeking a Senior Robotics Research Engineer to join its Seattle Robotics Lab, focusing on AI and robotics for drug discovery. This role involves developing fundamental robotics technology and building real-world systems to automate and bring autonomy to molecular discovery, manufacturing, testing, and validation. You will work on creating digital twins of robots and lab environments, simulating robot physics, developing perception pipelines, and translating experimental protocols into executable physical procedures. The position requires training robots for complex manipulation tasks and integrating these systems into biological experiment workflows, collaborating with research scientists and engineers across NVIDIA and Eli Lilly.
Responsibilities
- Build digital twins of robots, laboratory environments, and scientific procedures using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and Matterix.
- Simulate robot physics, including articulated rigid bodies, deformable objects, granular media, and fluids, using NVIDIA Newton.
- Develop perception pipelines for object detection, pose estimation, and tracking, leveraging multisensory inputs and foundation models.
- Translate experimental protocols into executable physical procedures and collision-free trajectories using VLMs and task/motion planning pipelines.
- Train robots for contact-rich manipulation tasks using imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and high-performance control.
- Build and integrate real-world systems for discovery, manufacturing, testing, and validation procedures with high reliability and efficiency into biological experiment workflows.
- Collaborate with research scientists to integrate early-stage research findings into the automation and autonomy stack.
- Collaborate with scientists and engineers in the NVIDIA + Lilly Co-innovation AI Lab on drug discovery challenges.
- Co-author publications on technological achievements at scientific journals and conferences.
Requirements
- PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- At least 3 years of research and engineering experience post-PhD; 5+ years preferred.
- Deep knowledge of robotics and AI theory and practice, with strong expertise in real-world robotics applications.
- Exceptional communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills, with experience as a team leader and contributor.
- Exceptional programming skills in Python; familiarity with C++, CUDA, and Warp is a plus.
- Track record of writing clean, high-quality code using standard software engineering methodologies (unit tests, version control, CI/CD).
- Fluency in modern deep learning frameworks like PyTorch and JAX, and experience training models on GPU clusters.
- Significant experience with robotics frameworks (e.g., ROS2) and physics simulation frameworks (e.g., Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo).
- Comfort with simulation and real-world robotics complexities, including debugging physics simulators, setting up hardware, debugging communication systems, and designing model training/evaluation workflows.
- Willingness to experiment with rapidly developing robotics and AI technologies (e.g., foundation models, world models, agentic AI) and quickly learn biology, chemistry, and laboratory automation.
- Direct experience in scientific and laboratory automation is a significant plus.