Embodied AI / Simulation Engineer

Formic•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Who we are: Formic is on a mission to reshape American manufacturing by making automation accessible to every factory. As labor constraints rise, costs increase, and global competition intensifies, automation is no longer optional for manufacturers that want to stay competitive. We deliver automation through a Robotics-as-a-Service model that combines industrial robotics, proprietary software, and full-service support into a single, integrated solution. By removing the traditional barriers of cost, complexity, and risk, we enable manufacturers to deploy automation quickly and realize measurable gains in throughput, safety, and operational efficiency without large upfront capital investment. Backed by leading investors including Lux Capital, Initialized Capital, Blackhorn Ventures, and Mitsubishi HC Capital North America, Formic is scaling rapidly and building the foundation for a new era of high-performance, Made in America production. About the team: The Software Engineering Team builds and operates the systems that power Formic’s Robotics-as-a-Service platform. The team develops the monitoring, provisioning, and data infrastructure that enables real-time visibility across a growing fleet of deployed industrial robotic systems. Engineering ensures systems are observable, resilient, and remotely diagnosable at scale by building production-grade edge and cloud systems that support reliable data collection, remote troubleshooting, live video streaming, and continuous system improvement. This work directly impacts fleet uptime, service efficiency, and customer outcomes. Within Engineering, Formic is launching a brand-new Advanced Robotics Team focused on building next-generation intelligent robotic systems designed to operate in real industrial environments. This team will develop wheeled humanoids and advanced mobile manipulation platforms, pushing beyond classical robotics stacks into modern embodied AI systems. Formic is uniquely positioned to do this. We already operate hundreds of deployed robotic systems and maintain production-grade deployment, monitoring, and fleet infrastructure across real manufacturing customers. This provides what most humanoid startups do not: continuous real-world data, production testing environments, and a clear path from research to scaled deployment. This is not a demo lab. We are building learning-driven robotic systems that operate daily in real factories. About this role: As an Embodied AI / Simulation Engineer, you will develop learning-based manipulation systems for humanoid and mobile manipulation platforms and ensure they transfer reliably into the real world. You will build the simulation, data, and training infrastructure needed to develop robust visuomotor policies and deploy them onto physical robotic systems operating in production environments. This role sits at the intersection of simulation, machine learning, and robotics execution. You will work closely with perception and controls teams to ensure learned policies operate safely, reliably, and effectively in closed-loop real-world conditions.

Requirements

Experience training embodied AI policies for real robotic systems
Strong understanding of sim-to-real challenges and real-world failure modes
Familiarity with transformer-based action models such as ACT
Experience with diffusion policies or other generative control approaches
Experience working with multi-modal inputs including vision, proprioception, and language
Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX
Experience integrating learned policies with real-time control system
Strong experimental design, evaluation discipline, and attention to reproducibility
Ability to operate across research and deployment constraints without losing rigor

Responsibilities

Design and train learning-based manipulation systems for humanoid and mobile manipulation platforms
Develop and maintain high-fidelity digital twins using Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or similar simulation tools
Implement and evaluate approaches including Action Chunking with Transformers (ACT), diffusion policies, behavior cloning, and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models
Contribute to development of a Universal Manipulation Interface (UMI) abstraction layer
Build teleoperation-to-training data pipelines to enable scalable dataset generation
Design sim-to-real transfer strategies including domain randomization and system identification
Evaluate policy robustness, failure modes, and cross-task generalization
Partner with perception and controls teams to ensure stable closed-loop visuomotor policies
Deploy trained models onto real robotic systems and support on-hardware validation and debugging
Establish experimental rigor through structured evaluation, ablations, and performance tracking

Benefits

Equity in Formic: Participate in our stock option program and share in the success of a fast-growing start-up backed by leading global investors
Competitive & Uncapped Commission Structure: Designed to reward performance and impact in commission-eligible roles
Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield and Unum, with 99% of employee premiums covered and 75% coverage for dependents, with optional buy-up plans available
Additional Insurance Benefits: FSA and DCFSA, life insurance, short-term disability, and long-term disability through Unum, all 100% employer-paid
Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Fully funded by Formic, offering support when you need it most
Paid Parental Leave Program: Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave
Company-sponsored 401(k): Invest in your future with our company-facilitated retirement savings plan
Home Office Stipend: A one-time allowance for fully remote and hybrid employees to support an at-home or on-the-road work setup
Monthly Cell Phone Reimbursement: Monthly stipend toward personal phone and internet expenses
Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need, when you need it, supported by our flexible PTO policy