Senior Software Engineer, Robot Dynamics & Simulation

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this ground-breaking shift in mobility, we’ve built an elite team in Energy & Materials, Human-Centered AI, Human-Interactive Driving, and Robotics.
The MissionMake general-purpose robots a reality.
The ChallengeWe envision a future where robots assist with household chores and cooking, aid older individuals in maintaining their independence, and enable people to spend more time on the activities they enjoy most. To achieve this, robots need to be able to operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments. Our mission is to answer the question “What will it take to create truly general-purpose robots that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in settings like human homes with minimal human supervision?”. We believe that the answer lies in cultivating large-scale datasets of physical interaction from a variety of sources and building on the latest advances in machine learning to learn general-purpose robot behaviors from this data.
RoboticsThe mission of TRI Robotics is to invent and prove new robotic capabilities required to enable home robots to solve the challenges faced by an aging society. As part of that mission, we are developing a sophisticated suite of open source robotics software called Drake (https://drake.mit.edu), for use in our internal robotics projects and the wider community of advanced robotics researchers.
TeamWithin TRI Robotics, the Dynamics and Simulation team develops Drake tools to model and simulate mobile robot dynamics, object manipulation, and perception. We emphasize physical accuracy and robust, performant software permitting controller synthesis, learning, analysis, regression testing, and design in simulation that transfers significantly to the real world. Features include:
- Physics-based, high-fidelity, high-performance software tools for the simulation of robots and vehicles interacting with their environments.- Multibody dynamics, rigid and soft body computational mechanics.- A unique hybrid dynamic system abstraction and infrastructure (like Simulink blocks, but differentiable and symbolically analyzable).- Solvers for dynamic systems (numerical integration of DAEs, time stepping, event handling).- Computational geometry and contact response (emphasizing manipulation).-Validation of simulation accuracy and verification of software and numerical methods.
This is open source, modern C++ software, developed using standard methodologies including extensive unit and validation tests, and collaborative pre-merge peer review. We encourage publication of novel work in peer-reviewed literature, and collaboration with the wider robotics community.
We are looking for someone to help us move this software forward. The candidate loves to program and enjoys the intricacies of crafting accurate, appealing, and performant advanced C++ code as part of a similarly-devoted team. The team consists of computer scientists and engineers trained at leading academic institutions and innovative companies, with research and practical experience in robotics, computer graphics, computational geometry and mechanics, multibody dynamics, numerical methods, and software engineering. We have considerable expertise in all these fields and a lot of software to write, so there is much interesting work to do and plenty of opportunity to extend your knowledge in any of the above areas. There are many open problems to solve, and the ideal candidate will provide feedback and solutions on both quality code and novel solutions.

Responsibilities

• Write great code, and help others do the same. Live and breathe software practices that produce performant, maintainable code, including great design, automated testing, continuous integration, code style consistency, and code review.
• Collaborate with other software engineers and research scientists to develop and maintain a physically-accurate, reliable, and fast open-source simulation toolkit.
• Distill physical and mathematical phenomena into the clearest possible software model, and make it work.
• Solve difficult modeling, mathematical, and implementation problems with a focus on accuracy of simulation results, reliability, and performance.
• Scope and design new features to meet the needs of Drake users inside and outside of TRI.

Qualifications

• Excellent C++ software development skills, and Python useful.
• Experience developing numerical methods and scientific software, including physics-based simulation.
• Good communication skills and willingness to work collaboratively.
• Strong understanding of scientific software accuracy and performance issues and tradeoffs.
• Solid grasp of linear algebra, differential equations, nonlinear equations, and related numerical methods.
• Familiarity with automated testing practices and a desire to write great unit tests along with your software.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent; advanced degree, physics, and engineering background a plus.
• 5+ years of experience in a related position (or equivalent).
• Desired – deep knowledge and expertise in one or more of: hybrid systems, multibody dynamics, numerical integration, GPU programming, discrete and differential computational geometry, contact mechanics, differential-algebraic equations, game programming, physics-based animation.

The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $180,000 and $270,000/year for California-based roles; however, base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Note that TRI offers a generous benefits package (including 401(k) eligibility and various paid time off benefits, such as vacation, sick time, and parental leave) and an annual cash bonus structure. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.
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