Principal Engineer - AV Simulation and Evaluation

NVIDIA is hiring a Principal Engineer - AV Simulation and Evaluation in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $272k-$431k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.

Level's read on this job

Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
The posting mentions computer vision among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a lead role.
NVIDIA has 2,600+ other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

computer-vision

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to architect and build core platform systems to accelerate Physical AI development, such as Autonomous Driving (AV) & Robotics. This is a technical role for someone with expertise at the intersection of data architecture, distributed systems, and Autonomous Vehicle development across cloud, local, and on-road environments. You will own deep technical areas end-to-end: such as AV/Robotics simulation infrastructure and AV performance evaluation.

What you will be doing:

Design and build simulation and evaluation infrastructure used by AV and ML engineers, to accelerate development of Level 4 self-driving capabilities.
Evolve efficient data formats for AV evaluation: designing for performance, interoperability, and correctness across formats like Protobuf, Arrow, Parquet, and MCAP.
Collaborate with AI and Robotics teams to deeply understand their simulation and evaluation needs.
Build reliable services, APIs, data pipelines, and AV simulation and evaluation workflows and framework that operate at the scale of hundreds of millions of runs per day.
Optimize performance at every level: profiling, parallelization, memory efficiency, query optimization, and protocol redesign.
Build diagnostic and observability tooling that enables teams to understand and debug their data and test pipelines.
Actively drive the adoption of new standards and technologies in the physical AI tooling ecosystem.

What We Need to See:

BS or MS in Computer Science (or equivalent experience).
15+ years of professional experience in software engineering with focus on distributed systems and data-intensive applications.
Proficiency in Go, Python, or Java, and experience operating across the full backend stack.
Deep experience building high-performance low-latency data systems: binary serialization, efficient data encoding, columnar data formats.
Strong understanding of distributed systems: concurrency, consistency tradeoffs, latency optimization, and compute-efficient design.
Ability to identify and fix performance bottlenecks through optimization across the stack, including redesigning protocols and data models.
Experience designing and implementing workflows across distributed systems.
Past success building foundational systems that multiple teams depend on, with high reliability and scale.
Communication skills to be able to translate nuanced system design to both technical and non-technical partners, and talk to users in their language.
Ability to lead cross-functional projects, influence without authority, and get work done across organizational boundaries.

Ways to Stand Out from the crowd:

Experience building orchestration or workflow execution systems (e.g., Temporal.io, similar workflow engines)
Experience working with sensor data pipelines: ROS, MCAP, AV logs, Parquet, Apache Arrow, or similar domain formats
Understanding of AV & Robotics concepts such as kinematics, control systems, computer vision, motion planning, and/or neural networks
Experience improving legacy systems through incremental migration, deprecation, and architecture cleanup.

Widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers, NVIDIA offers highly competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. As you plan your future, see what we can offer to you and your family www.nvidiabenefits.com/

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary range for this position is 272,000 USD – 431,250 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 6, 2026.

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.

How we rate this

Principal Engineer - AV Simulation and Evaluation at NVIDIA rates 64 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Principal Engineer - AV Simulation and Evaluation is an open job at NVIDIA.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The listed salary is $272k-$431k a year.
The role is based in US, CA, Santa Clara.
The job was posted on November 2, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by NVIDIA. Apply on NVIDIA

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Computer vision

Questions you could be asked

Walk me through a computer vision problem you solved, from raw data to a deployed model.
Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Computer vision. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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