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Research Engineer, Atlas Physics Simulation for RL

Boston Dynamics
Waltham, MA Full Time
POSTED ON 1/1/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 1/31/2026
Are you passionate about using physics simulation, reinforcement learning and humanoid robots? Curious what you’d be able to accomplish with total access to Boston Dynamics robots? As a Research Engineer working on physics simulation on the Atlas Behavior Learning team, you will join a world-class team of engineers and scientists focused on creating groundbreaking mobile manipulation behaviors for humanoids.

We are investing in reinforcement learning and physics simulation as a key technology for achieving dexterous and robust whole-body manipulation that can be deployed in real-world environments.

In This Role, You Will Be Responsible For

  • Develop large scale physics simulation that can efficiently train reinforcement learning agents
  • Evaluate and benchmark different physics simulators, mesh representations and rendering pipelines
  • Scale physics simulations to generate millions of samples per second
  • Build synthetic rendering pipelines to create photorealistic images
  • Extend existing physics simulators to improve simulation quality

We Are Looking For

  • MS with 3 years of industry experience or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
  • Detailed understanding physics simulation including contact solvers and mesh representations
  • Extensive experience with physics simulation including MuJoCo, IsaacSim and Warp
  • Experience with rendering pipelines to create photorealistic synthetic images
  • Strong foundation in Python, C and modern numerical frameworks (e.g., PyTorch and Jax)
  • Experience in algorithm design, debugging, and performance optimization

The Ideal Candidate Has

  • A PhD or equivalent research experience in reinforcement learning or robotic manipulation
  • Publications at top tier robotics venues including RSS, CoRL, Science Robotics, ICRA
  • Experience training RL policies in simulation for robots or simulated characters
  • Strong understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of gpu based simulators
  • Understanding of GPU and CPU compute architectures
  • Experience with heterogeneous compute clusters, kubernetes and docker

Why join us?

  • Direct access to cutting-edge robots and the infrastructure to run large-scale experiments
  • A collaborative, mission-driven team where your ideas have real impact
  • The chance to help define what’s possible in real-world robotics

Salary.com Estimation for Research Engineer, Atlas Physics Simulation for RL in Waltham, MA
$128,187 to $154,829
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