Staff Engineer - Robot Learning, Embodied AI

Niantic SpatialSan Francisco, CAEngineering

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Opens the official Niantic Spatial careers page

Salary

$270K – $300K

Job type

Full-time

Work mode

Remote

Experience

Senior

Posted

2 Oct 2026

Status

Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Staff Engineer - Robot Learning, Embodied AI is an on-site role based in San Francisco, CA that suits an experienced, hands-on robotics professional with a background in robot learning and simulation. This position involves leading the engineering efforts for the real-to-sim product within the Embodied AI group at Niantic Spatial.

Role Overview

Staff Engineer - Robot Learning, Embodied AI is a full-time position located in San Francisco, CA, requiring three days per week in the office. The role focuses on building the scalable real-to-sim stack for embodied AI, addressing the sim-to-real gap for visual-spatial understanding. The professional in this role collaborates with the General Manager and Product leader to inform the product roadmap, own technical requirements, and personally prototype and evaluate proposed changes.

Key Responsibilities

Sharpen the roadmap by bringing first-hand knowledge of customer pain points, existing solutions, and the value of better alternatives to roadmap decisions.

Own the technical requirements by guiding the team to design the real-to-sim stack pragmatically and making final recommendations on what to build, integrate, and simplify.

Benchmark the impact by designing and running reproducible evaluations that measure the real-to-sim stack's effect on policy transfer and real-world performance using a Real-World Test Lab.

Build and ship by leading engineering delivery, personally building critical features, removing blockers, and delivering capabilities to customers quickly.

Raise the technical bar by setting high standards for the team and deepening its understanding of robotics development and deployment.

Requirements

Experience training, evaluating, and deploying robot policies in systems used by enterprise or government customers with responsibility for real-world performance.

Deep practical experience using simulation for policy training or evaluation, including tools like NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, or MuJoCo.

Hands-on experience with reinforcement learning, imitation learning, or both, alongside deep-learning frameworks like PyTorch.

Practical understanding of how visual perception and 3D scene representations impact robotics training, evaluation, and performance.

Experience running experiments on real robots from an ambiguous hypothesis to defensible results.

Strong Python and C++ skills with experience building reliable production software.

A bachelor's degree or higher in a relevant field.

Nice to Have

Authored or maintained a public robotics benchmark.

Helped take an early product to repeatable adoption across multiple customers.

Built or substantially extended robotics simulation infrastructure such as scene authoring, domain randomization, or large-scale training and evaluation.

Trained and deployed vision-based navigation or mobility policies in varied, unstructured environments.

Built pipelines that turn real-world reconstructions into simulation-ready environments.

Skills and Tools

Python

C++

PyTorch

NVIDIA Isaac Sim

Isaac Lab

MuJoCo

Salary and Benefits

Expected salary range of $270,000 to $300,000 per year

Annual bonus

Equity offerings

Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k)

About the Company

Niantic Spatial builds physical AI technology powered by a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images. The company's mapping technology provides reconstruction technology and a Visual Positioning System to serve customers across robotics, the public sector, and energy and industrial markets.

How to Apply

Candidates should apply on the official company careers page.

Skills and tech stack

Python C++PyTorch NVIDIA Isaac Sim Isaac Lab MuJoCo Reinforcement Learning Deep Learning

Questions candidates ask

What is the location and work model for this role?

The role is based in the San Francisco, CA office with a requirement to work three days per week in the office.

What is the salary range for the Staff Engineer position?

The expected salary range is $270,000 to $300,000 per year, accompanied by an annual bonus and equity.

What simulation tools and frameworks are required or mentioned?

The posting lists tools such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and MuJoCo, as well as the PyTorch deep-learning framework.

What education is required?

A bachelor's degree or higher in a relevant field is required.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Niantic Spatial careers page.

Apply on company site