At NVIDIA, we are advancing autonomous vehicle development through scalable simulation, AI, and thorough validation. Our Autonomous Vehicle Simulation team builds systems that help engineers develop, test, debug, and improve driving behavior before it reaches the road. We connect planner and controller intent to realistic motion across highway, city, parking, and active-safety scenarios. In this Principal-level individual contributor role, you’ll shape a production vehicle dynamics simulation framework spanning model fidelity, parameter adaptation, software interfaces, validation, and integration. Join us in making demanding maneuvers—from low-speed parking to evasive steering and hard braking—more faithful in simulation!
What you’ll be doing:
Be responsible for the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for vehicle dynamics simulation across highway, city, parking, active-safety, and low-speed workflows.
Develop production-quality C++ interfaces for simplified, replay-based, and high-fidelity multibody models.
Create scalable model-selection, parameter-identification, adaptation, and validation workflows for diverse vehicle platforms.
Translate trajectory and control commands into time-aligned motion, state, and diagnostic outputs.
Establish model parameters, software boundaries, regression metrics, compatibility practices, and release gates.
Partner with planning and controls, parking, active safety, simulation reliability, synthetic data, and product teams.
Set technical standards, mentor engineers, and supply hands-on through design, implementation, debugging, testing, and documentation.
What we need to see:
Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
15+ years of relevant industry experience.
Deep knowledge of longitudinal and lateral vehicle dynamics, tire-road interaction, steering, braking, actuator limits, latency, saturation, kinematic and dynamic bicycle models, multi-degree-of-freedom dynamics, multibody simulation, and tire models such as Pacejka Magic Formula, Fiala, FTire, or TMeasy.
Strong C++ skills for production software and Python skills for analysis, validation, data processing, tooling, and test automation.
A record of building modular, testable production systems for simulation, computer-aided engineering, robotics, autonomous vehicles, automotive controls, or physics-based software.
Proven ability to calibrate and validate simulation models using measured logs, test-track data, controlled maneuvers, or simulation benchmarks while maintaining deterministic behavior and regression coverage.
Principal-level technical leadership and clear communication across multidisciplinary engineering and product teams.
Ways to stand out from the crowd:
Experience with Project Chrono and Chrono::Vehicle, CARLA, CarSim, CarMaker, Simulink and Simscape, ADAMS, Simbody, BeamNG, Unreal Engine and PhysX, or comparable simulation frameworks.
Success integrating multibody and parameterized model families across vehicle architectures, payloads, tire and road conditions, parking behavior, or original equipment manufacturer and supplier workflows.
Familiarity with Protocol Buffers, gRPC, API and ABI compatibility, Bazel, CMake, containerized simulation, continuous integration, CUDA, validation dashboards, or high-performance numerical computing.
We value different paths to technical excellence and welcome candidates who bring strong judgment, curiosity, and a collaborative approach. Come build the future of autonomous vehicle simulation with us!
You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.
This posting is for an existing vacancy.
NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.
NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 15+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Deep knowledge of longitudinal and lateral vehicle dynamics, tire-road interaction, steering, braking, actuator limits, latency, saturation, kinematic and dynamic bicycle models, multibody simulation.
- Familiarity with tire models such as Pacejka Magic Formula, Fiala, FTire, or TMeasy.
- Strong C++ skills for production software.
- Python skills for analysis, validation, data processing, tooling, and test automation.
- Record of building modular, testable production systems for simulation, CAE, robotics, autonomous vehicles, controls, or physics-based software.
- Proven ability to calibrate and validate simulation models using measured logs, test-track data, controlled maneuvers, or simulation benchmarks while maintaining deterministic behavior and regression coverage.
- Principal-level technical leadership and clear communication across multidisciplinary engineering and product teams.
NVIDIA Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about NVIDIA and has not been reviewed or approved by NVIDIA.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity awards and a discounted ESPP are highlighted as core parts of total compensation, enabling employees to share in the company’s success. Stock-based compensation and the two-year lookback ESPP are consistently described as especially valuable.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is portrayed as robust, with comprehensive medical, dental, and vision options alongside mental health support and on-site care resources. Employer HSA contributions and wellness perks reinforce the depth of the offering.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs are depicted as strong, featuring a meaningful 401(k) match with Roth options and support for Mega Backdoor Roth contributions. These elements position long-term savings as a notable advantage of the total rewards package.
NVIDIA Insights
What We Do
NVIDIA’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined modern computer graphics, and revolutionized parallel computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the next era of computing — with the GPU acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world. Today, NVIDIA is increasingly known as “the AI computing company.”
