Senior Simulation Software Engineer in Santa Clara, California at PlusAI Inc

We are looking for a Senior Simulation Software Engineer to build and scale the simulation infrastructure that powers our autonomous vehicle development. You will architect simulation pipelines, leverage AI agentic workflows to analyze simulation results, and drive improvements in simulation fidelity to validate autonomy systems and enable critical program milestones. This role offers the opportunity to drive immediate user value while building advanced, AI-powered frameworks for long-term safety validation.

• Design and build AI agentic workflows that automatically analyze simulation results, identify failures, and surface root causes across large-scale test runs, translating them into actionable insights for engineering teams.

• Architect and build scalable simulation pipelines, including the metric evaluation framework, and conduct in-depth analysis of road test and simulation data to identify trends, anomalies, and key performance indicators that enhance model accuracy and validate autonomy performance.

• Identify, quantify, and reduce sources of divergence between simulation and real-world behavior, leveraging AI and data-driven techniques to increase simulation fidelity across actor behaviors, sensor models, and system dynamics.

• Monitor and improve the performance, scalability, testing, and reliability of the platform.

• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams—including simulation, onboard, systems engineering, and data science—to reproduce and resolve issues encountered during real-world road tests.

• Work with other engineers to design the long-term architecture of the system.

• Ensure that technical work meets customer requirements, regulatory standards, and company quality policies, in accordance with the company's Quality Management System (QMS), and contribute to continuous improvement efforts.

• MS with 3+ years of relevant experience, or a PhD new grad, in mechanical, electrical, aerospace engineering, physics, computer science, or a related field.

• Experience building LLM-powered or agentic workflows for data analysis, evaluation, or automation.

• Experience quantifying or improving simulation fidelity / closing the sim-to-real gap (e.g., sensor modeling, actor behavior modeling, scenario generation).

• Proficient in Python or C++, with experience building scalable data processing systems or evaluation frameworks.

• Ability to solve open-ended technical challenges.

• Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively in a team setting.

• Experience with autonomous vehicle or robotics simulation and related concepts.

• Familiarity with LLM agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, or similar) and prompt/tool-orchestration patterns.

• Experience developing metrics, user-facing APIs, or interfaces between system components.