Simulation Engineer – Advanced Product Development

Our client is a Fortune 10 company investing heavily in technology and innovation to develop the next generation of material handling equipment and systems. As part of this investment, the company is expanding its internal product development capabilities and building a team focused on the design and development of high-speed conveyance and sortation technologies. This is an opportunity to join an innovative engineering organization at the forefront of applying advanced simulation, robotics, and AI to the development of large-scale material handling systems.

What You'll Do

• Develop simulation-first workflows and tools for material handling equipment development, partnering with hardware engineers to establish effective sim-to-reality processes.
• Build system-level simulations of conveyors, sorters, lifts, chutes, and other material handling equipment, including package flow, throughput, collisions, and physical interactions.
• Develop detailed component-level simulations of mechanical systems, including mechanisms, linkages, motors, belts, pulleys, bearings, and other machine elements.
• Develop realistic virtual models of packages such as cardboard boxes, envelopes, poly bags, and other materials, including their physical and deformable properties.
• Conduct physical experiments to measure properties such as friction, stiffness, damping, and contact behavior and incorporate those results into simulation models.
• Use simulation to investigate complex physical interactions and develop new modeling techniques where existing approaches are insufficient.
• Work with simulation platforms such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab, Emulate3D, FlexSim, and other advanced simulation tools, selecting the appropriate platform for each application.
• Integrate virtual sensors, cameras, controls, and physical controllers into real-time simulations to validate system behavior before physical equipment is built.
• Apply discrete-event simulation, Monte Carlo methods, and continuous-time physics simulation to evaluate system performance across a wide range of operating conditions.
• Explore machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques to optimize equipment designs and operating strategies.
• Establish methods for validating simulation results against physical equipment and continuously improve model accuracy.
• Collaborate closely with mechanical, electrical, controls, and software engineers to ensure simulations accurately represent real-world systems.
• Help establish simulation and sim-to-reality best practices across the product development organization and mentor other engineers in advanced simulation methodologies.

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience developing complex physical models and simulations for engineering applications, including system-level and/or component-level modeling.
• Experience with simulation platforms such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab, Emulate3D, or FlexSim.
• Experience with 3D modeling and design tools such as SolidWorks.
• Experience with a real-time 3D or game engine such as Unreal Engine or Unity.
• Strong understanding of 3D mathematics, including coordinate transformations, quaternions, and camera models.
• Strong understanding of physics and dynamics, including rigid-body dynamics, collision detection, friction, contact mechanics, and deformable-body simulation.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, testing, or troubleshooting mechanical systems.
• Experience with discrete-event, Monte Carlo, and continuous-time physics simulation methodologies.
• Experience integrating sensors, controls, or controllers into simulation environments.
• Experience with real-time simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Knowledge of AI-driven simulation techniques and synthetic data generation.
• Demonstrated ability to develop creative technical solutions to complex engineering problems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related field.
• Experience conducting physical experiments to measure material properties and validate simulation models.
• Experience with MuJoCo or other physics engines used for robotics and control.
• Background in robotics, automation, mechatronics, logistics, fulfillment, or material handling.
• Proficiency with Python, C++, or other programming languages used in simulation development.
• Experience modeling mechanical power transmission systems, including belts, chains, gears, and linkages.
• Experience using simulation to reduce product development cycles and physical prototyping.
• Experience working with mechanical, electrical, controls, and software engineering teams.
• Publications or patents related to simulation, physics-based modeling, or related technologies.
• Knowledge of 3D/4D Gaussian splatting techniques is a plus.

Base compensation is $150k-165k, additional bonuses and variable comp offered, total target compensation $200k+