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NVIDIA

Senior Software Engineer, Spatial Intelligence and Foundation Models

NVIDIA is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Spatial Intelligence and Foundation Models in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $184k-$288k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.

Level's read on this job

  • Level rates this software engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
  • Pay on this posting starts 10% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions Claude, PyTorch and TensorFlow among its tools and skills.
  • Level classes it as a senior role.
  • NVIDIA has 2,700+ other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

ClaudePyTorchTensorFlowJAXCursorClaude CodeCodex
ai-agentscomputer-vision

NVIDIA is seeking a Software Engineer to join our Isaac Spatial Intelligence team within the Isaac Engineering org! You will join a group of world-class robotics software and applied research engineers focused on geometric and semantic understanding, and reasoning for robots — building the perception systems that turn raw sensor data into actionable world understanding, shaping the future of physical AI!

What you'll be doing:

  • Design, implement, and deploy novel algorithms for spatial understanding, working on problems ranging from SLAM, structure-from-motion, optical flow, scene flow, and object reconstruction to training VLMs on a wide range of spatial reasoning skills.

  • Develop robust perception, mapping, and reasoning systems that run on robots, in simulation, and at scale in data pipelines for training foundation models.

  • Advance the state of the art in geometric computer vision, combining classical multi-view geometry and optimization with modern deep learning approaches.

  • Train and evaluate vision-language models on skills relevant to robotics.

  • Work closely with the Cosmos and GR00T teams on perception and spatial understanding for foundation models and collaborate with other Isaac teams including Sim/Lab, Platform and SQA to deploy, validate, extend and release capabilities & features on physical robots as well as in at-scale simulations.

  • Contribute to the effective integration, validation, and release of applied research efforts in collaboration with research teams and on top of NVIDIA's advanced robotics platforms.

  • Foster a culture of innovation and collaboration, supporting deliverables such as prototypes, open source software contributions, patents, and publications.

  • Collaborate cross-functionally with product, hardware, and software teams to translate engineering work into impactful products.

What we need to see:

  • PhD or Master's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

  • 8+ years of experience working on computer vision, robotics, or deep learning technologies.

  • Strong foundation in 3D geometric computer vision: multi-view geometry, visual odometry/SLAM, structure-from-motion, or dense correspondence (optical flow, scene flow, stereo).

  • Strong hands-on programming skills in Python and/or C++; experience with Deep Learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).

  • Experience training and evaluating deep learning models for perception tasks; familiarity with vision-language models is a strong plus.

  • Strong skills in agentic tool use — proficiency working with AI coding agents and agentic workflows (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) to accelerate development, testing, and experimentation.

  • Excellent communication, organizational, and interpersonal skills.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

  • Contributions to widely used SLAM, SfM, or 3D reconstruction systems (open source or shipped products).

  • Experience with large-scale model training on GPU clusters, including VLMs or other foundation models.

  • Publications at top computer vision or robotics venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, CoRL).

  • Hands-on experience with simulation-based training and evaluation, sim-to-real and real-to-sim transfer.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary ranges for this position are:
184,000 USD – 287,500 USD for Level 4; and 224,000 USD – 356,500 USD for Level 5.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 3, 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

Senior Software Engineer, Spatial Intelligence and Foundation Models at NVIDIA rates 99 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ 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.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI agentsComputer visionClaudePyTorchTensorFlowJAXCursorClaude Code

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$184k
Typical software engineer job
$167k

This posting starts 10% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
  2. Walk me through a computer vision problem you solved, from raw data to a deployed model.
  3. What are the limits of Claude that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
  4. What's a project where you used PyTorch hands-on?
  5. Walk me through how you've used TensorFlow in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Computer vision, Claude, PyTorch, and TensorFlow. 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.
  • Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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