Senior Robotics Research Engineer, Robotics and AI for Drug Discovery

Details

NVIDIA's Seattle Robotics Lab is developing fundamental and applied robotics research across perception, planning, control, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, simulation, world models, and multimodal action models. In partnership with Eli Lilly, the lab is building physical AI for wet labs with scientists in the loop to support automation and autonomy for molecular discovery, manufacturing, testing, and validation.

Responsibilities

• Use NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and Matterix to build digital twins of robots, laboratory environments, and scientific procedures.
• Use NVIDIA Newton to simulate robot physics, articulated rigid bodies, deformable objects, granular media, and fluids.
• Develop perception pipelines for object detection, pose estimation, and tracking using multisensory inputs such as RGB, depth, force/torque, and tactile data, along with foundation models.
• Translate experimental protocols into executable physical procedures and smooth, collision-free trajectories using vision-language models and task and motion planning pipelines.
• Train robots for contact-rich manipulation tasks using imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and high-performance control.
• Build reliable and efficient real-world systems for discovery, manufacturing, testing, and validation procedures.
• Integrate robotics systems into biological experiment workflows.
• Collaborate with research scientists in the Seattle Robotics Lab to advance early-stage research and integrate it into a mature automation and autonomy stack.
• Collaborate with research scientists and engineers in the NVIDIA and Eli Lilly Co-innovation AI Lab across computational biology and chemistry, generative and agentic AI, bioinformatics, and simulation.
• Periodically co-author publications on technological achievements in high-impact scientific journals and conferences.

Requirements

• PhD in Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 3 years of research and engineering experience after completing a PhD; 5 or more years is preferred.
• Deep knowledge of robotics and AI theory and practice, particularly real-world robotics applications.
• Exceptional communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills, with experience working on teams as both a leader and contributor.
• Exceptional Python programming skills. Familiarity with C++, CUDA, and Warp is a plus.
• Experience writing clean, high-quality code collaboratively using software engineering methodologies such as unit testing, version control, and CI/CD.
• Fluency with modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and JAX, including training deep learning models on GPU clusters.
• Significant experience with robotics frameworks such as ROS2 and physics simulation frameworks such as Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and MuJoCo.
• Experience debugging physics simulators, renderers, communication systems, and complex robotics hardware; designing robust workflows for model training and evaluation.
• Willingness to experiment with rapidly developing robotics and AI technologies, including robotics foundation models, world models, and agentic AI.
• Willingness to learn biology and chemistry fundamentals, laboratory tasks and hardware, laboratory automation standards, and safety and regulatory constraints.
• Direct experience in scientific and laboratory automation is a significant plus.

Areas of particular interest include bimanual manipulation; mobile manipulation and humanoid loco-manipulation; simulation, sim-to-real, and real-to-sim; multisensory perception; task and motion planning; grasp and manipulation planning; imitation learning and reinforcement learning; high-performance control; and robotics foundation models.

Compensation and Benefits

The base salary range is USD 184,000–287,500 for Level 4 and USD 224,000–356,500 for Level 5, depending on location, experience, and compensation for similar positions. The role also includes eligibility for equity and benefits.

NVIDIA is an equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse work environment.