Title
Simulation Engineer
Quick Summary
Meridian Digital Twins is hiring a Simulation Engineer to design, build, and operate high-fidelity virtual environments that accelerate robotics and autonomous systems development. You will create scenario generators, physics-based models, and hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop pipelines that faithfully reproduce edge cases and enable fast, reliable iteration. We are friendly to strong graduates and early-career engineers who have demonstrable projects in simulation, controls, or robotics; experienced applicants are welcome and will be considered for broader scope.
Project Category or Industry
Robotics and autonomy simulation for logistics, mobility, manufacturing, and industrial automation.
Type
Full-time employment.
Experience Level
Entry to mid-level with structured mentorship and clear growth paths; senior candidates are encouraged to apply.
Duration
Permanent role.
Location
Remote-first with optional hybrid hubs in Seattle, Washington and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Maintain at least four hours of overlap with teams operating between UTC−8 and UTC+2. Occasional travel for field data collection and customer pilots.
Salary
USD 98,000–148,000 base depending on location and experience, plus benefits and an annual performance bonus; equity eligibility may be offered for senior candidates.
Payment Mode
Monthly payroll for employees; compliant contractor arrangements are available in select countries.
Hiring Company Name
Meridian Digital Twins
Required Skills or Tools
Strong proficiency in C++ and Python; practical experience with a robotics middleware such as ROS 2; working knowledge of physics simulation, sensor modeling, and deterministic data pipelines; familiarity with containerization, continuous integration, and reproducible environments; clear technical writing to document assumptions, limitations, and validation results.
Project Description
Meridian Digital Twins builds the simulation infrastructure that lets robotics and autonomy teams test ideas safely and at scale before going to the field. As a Simulation Engineer, you will craft realistic environments, agents, and sensors, wire repeatable scenarios, and connect those worlds to training, evaluation, and deployment workflows. Your work ensures that virtual results translate to real-world performance through careful modeling, measurement, and validation.
Core Responsibilities and Expected Deliverables
Design and maintain high-fidelity environments with accurate dynamics, materials, and interactions for ground robots and autonomous vehicles.
Implement configurable scenario generators with domain randomization and curriculum progression that expose systems to rare and difficult edge cases.
Build and operate hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop pipelines, including real-time interfaces, latency budgets, and failure injection.
Model sensors such as cameras, lidar, radar, and inertial units with noise, distortion, and timing characteristics that match field data.
Create metrics, dashboards, and regression gates that track performance and prevent quality drift across releases.
Collaborate with perception, controls, and platform teams to align interfaces, data schemas, and test coverage; publish clear runbooks and documentation.
Required Experience and Preferred Qualifications
Competence in C++ for performance-critical components and Python for tooling and analysis; solid understanding of data structures, concurrency, and numerical methods.
Experience with one or more simulators such as Isaac Sim, Gazebo or Ignition, Unity, or CARLA; familiarity with GPU acceleration and headless rendering is helpful.
Exposure to calibration, coordinate frames, and time synchronization; comfort fitting simulated sensors to real logs.
Preferred: background in controls or motion planning, CUDA or Vulkan experience, and infrastructure as code with Terraform; open-source contributions are valued.
Tools or Platforms to Be Used
Simulation and rendering: Isaac Sim, Gazebo or Ignition, CARLA or Unity; headless pipelines for batch evaluation.
Robotics middleware and interfaces: ROS 2 with Fast DDS or Cyclone DDS; rosbag2 for replay; gRPC for control and telemetry bridges.
Data and analysis: NumPy and Pandas for evaluation, OpenCV and PCL for perception utilities, Prometheus and Grafana for metrics.
Build and CI: CMake, Bazel, GitHub Actions; Docker for reproducible environments; code formatters and static analyzers.
Language Requirement
Professional English is required. Dutch is a plus for Amsterdam-based projects; additional languages are welcome.
Communication Style
Written-first collaboration through design documents and pull requests; Slack for day-to-day coordination; Zoom for stand-ups, design reviews, and test debriefs. All user-facing changes must include documentation and change logs.
Time Commitment or Working Window
Standard forty hours per week with flexible scheduling. Maintain a predictable daily block that overlaps at least four hours with the core team between 09:00 and 17:00 in your local time. Short, planned early-morning or evening windows may be required during field deployments.
Payment Terms
Salary is paid monthly via payroll. For contractors, invoices are processed on net-thirty terms upon acceptance of deliverables and timesheets.
Evaluation Criteria
Portfolio or code samples demonstrating simulation fidelity, reproducibility, and measurable impact on system performance.
Practical exercise to build a scenario generator with domain randomization and a validation harness that compares simulated to real sensor logs.
Technical interview on physics modeling, sensor simulation, timing, and data flow; discussion of failure modes and how to detect them.
Collaboration interview focused on documentation quality, cross-team alignment, and stakeholder communication.
References may be requested.
Other Requirements
New hires sign a confidentiality agreement and follow security and data-handling policies. Light time-tracking may be used for distributed coordination. Export control compliance may apply based on nationality and project assignment.
About Meridian Digital Twins
Meridian Digital Twins is a privately held company that builds simulation platforms for robotics and autonomous systems. Based in Seattle with a distributed team across North America and Europe, Meridian is focused on turning virtual testing into operational confidence through accurate models, thoughtful metrics, and tight integration with real-world data. Learn more at https://www.meridiandigitaltwins.com and contact our hiring team at careers@meridiandigitaltwins.com.