Sr Applied Scientist - Robotics Simulation, Amazon Robotics R&D

## Responsibilities * Provide technical robotics direction for the team's Physical AI program, spanning simulation environment design, policy training, sim-to-real transfer, and real-world validation across multiple robotics platforms. * Mentor junior applied scientists and engineers on robot learning best practices, helping them diagnose sim-to-real gaps, debug policy failures on hardware, and iterate toward deployable solutions. * Design and execute sim-to-real transfer strategies, including system identification, domain randomization, physics parameter tuning, and visual domain adaptation, drawing on both classical and learned approaches. * Architect policy training pipelines that combine teleoperation data, synthetic demonstrations, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning (e.g., VLA models, diffusion policies, behavior cloning) for manipulation tasks. * Lead sim-to-real analysis: define metrics and methodologies for evaluating simulation fidelity, identifying where simulation diverges from reality, and prioritizing modeling improvements that impact downstream policy performance. * Collaborate with hardware teams on robot embodiment modeling, ensuring that digital twins accurately capture kinematics, joint dynamics, actuator limits, contact behavior, and sensor characteristics. * Evaluate and integrate state-of-the-art approaches from the Physical AI research community (foundation models for robotics, world models, action-chunking transformers, generalist policies) into the team's simulation and training infrastructure. * Contribute to end-effector modeling and physics tuning, ensuring physically plausible contact interactions and accurate tool behavior in simulation across diverse manipulation hardware. * Drive technical design reviews, author high-level design documents, and set the scientific direction for simulation fidelity and robot learning initiatives. ## Requirements - PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience - Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language - Experience with neural deep learning methods and machine learning ## Nice to Have - Broad experience across a range of physics simulators (IsaacSim, IsaacLab, MuJoCo, Drake, etc.), both as a sim “power-user” and technical developer - First-hand experience in sim2real transfer (i.e. developing learned policies in sim and successfully getting them to work on real robots) - Experiencing in closing sim2real gaps both in terms of visual fidelity and physics ## Benefits Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include: 1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage 2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options 3. Paid Time Off (PTO) 4. 401(k) Plan If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply!