--- title: 'Robotics Systems & Simulation Engineer at Xaira Therapeutics' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-systems-simulation-engineer-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-francisco-fv7m7yvh7rkd' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-26' --- # Robotics Systems & Simulation Engineer at Xaira Therapeutics - **Company:** Xaira Therapeutics - **Location:** South San Francisco, CA - **Posted:** 2026-10-21 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-26 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xairatherapeutics/jobs/5255784007 ## Job description ## About Xaira Therapeutics Xaira is an innovative biotech startup focused on leveraging AI to transform drug discovery and development. The company is leading the development of generative AI models to design protein and antibody therapeutics, enabling the creation of medicines against historically hard-to-drug molecular targets. It is also developing foundation models for biology and disease to enable better target elucidation and patient stratification. Collectively, these technologies aim to continually enable the identification of novel therapies and to improve success in drug development. Xaira is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and London. ## About the Role We are building a next-generation lab automation and robotics platform that brings together robotic systems, simulation, computer vision, and AI to improve the speed, reliability, reproducibility, and scale of experimental biology. As a Robotics Systems & Simulation Engineer, you will connect digital environments with physical systems and make robotic capabilities easier to adapt to new equipment and settings. You will own the simulation and digital-twin infrastructure that lets us bring vision-guided robots to new instruments quickly, and that serves as the testbed for robotics control, perception, and embodied AI. Working alongside robotics, AI, software, and automation engineers, you will develop and validate integrated systems from prototype through real-world operation. This is an on-site hands-on role spanning software, 3D geometry, simulation, and hardware. We value strong fundamentals, practical problem-solving, and the ability to learn across disciplines using modern engineering and AI development tools. ## What You’ll Do - Build integrated Real2Sim and Sim2Real workflows that can be reused across robotic platforms and laboratory environments. - Create and validate digital twins from CAD, robot and sensor models, and reconstructed scenes, including coordinate alignment, articulation, and collision geometry. - Connect simulation, perception, motion planning, and physical execution through the existing robot control stack, including robot state feedback and synchronization; investigate discrepancies between simulated and measured behavior. - Integrate AI models and task-level state machines with simulation and robotic tools, including structured requests, action validation, and execution feedback. - Build synthetic-data and augmentation workflows, along with synchronized video and telemetry capture, replay, and evaluation tools. - Benchmark system accuracy, reliability, latency, and GPU resource use; improve performance across local and cloud computing environments. - Collaborate with software engineers on reusable configuration and operator tools; validate new installations and reduce manual setup effort. - Work with scientists to integrate new capabilities, debug physical systems, and document architecture, experiments, and operating procedures. Qualifications (Required): - Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field. Recent graduates with substantial relevant research or project experience are encouraged to apply. - Strong software engineering skills in one or more languages such as Python, C++, or C#, with experience developing and debugging integrated applications in Linux. - Hands-on experience building or extending robotics simulations or digital twins using Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Gazebo, or comparable tools. - Solid understanding of 3D coordinate transformations, robot kinematics, calibration, and the relationship between simulated models and physical systems. - Experience integrating robots, sensors, or other physical systems through APIs, SDKs, ROS2, or comparable middleware. - Familiarity with GPU computing and cloud-based workflows for simulation, AI, or data processing. - Strong debugging and experimental skills, clear technical communication, and the ability to learn unfamiliar methods while critically validating software and AI-generated outputs. Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with 3D reconstruction, CAD/robot-model pipelines, RGB-D perception, multi-view fusion, or learned scene representations. - Experience integrating LLMs, vision-language models, AI agents, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers with external tools and physical systems. - Experience with spatial or object reasoning, active perception, or perception of transparent, reflective, or partially occluded objects. - Experience with video understanding, human-object interaction, learning from demonstrations, imitation learning, or other robot-learning methods. - Experience with GPU profiling, CUDA programming, accelerated inference, or edge deployment. - Experience with 6-axis robotic arms, mobile robots, laboratory instruments, or hands-on mechanical prototyping. - Experience integrating robots, sensors, or other physical systems through APIs, SDKs, ROS2, or comparable middleware. - Experience mentoring students, interns, or junior engineers. What We Offer: - Hands-on ownership of robotics and simulation systems in a state-of-the-art biotechnology laboratory. - Opportunities to work across biology, mechanical and computational engineering with AI, software, automation, and scientific teams. - Access to advanced robotic platforms, scientific instrumentation, GPU computing, and AI development tools. - Technical mentorship, the opportunity to mentor research interns and residents, cross-disciplinary growth, and the opportunity to contribute to AI-enabled drug discovery in a collaborative environment. ## Compensation We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, seeking to provide an open, flexible, and friendly work environment to empower employees and provide them with a platform to develop their long-term careers. A Summary of Benefits is available for all applicants. We offer a competitive package that includes base salary, bonus, and equity. The base pay range for this position is expected to be $150,000 - $185,000 annually; however, the base pay offered will vary depending on the market, job-related knowledge, skills and capabilities, and experience. Xaira Therapeutics an equal-opportunity employer. We believe that our strength is in our differences. Our goal to build a diverse and inclusive team began on day one, and it will never end. TO ALL RECRUITMENT AGENCIES: Xaira Therapeutics does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias or employees. Xaira Therapeutics is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes. ## About Xaira Therapeutics ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Xaira Therapeutics is an integrated biotechnology company applying artificial intelligence across the entire drug discovery and development process to design next-generation medicines. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series A) - **Headquarters**: South San Francisco, California, United States (with offices in Seattle, Washington, and London, UK) - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Co-founded and incubated by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, with foundational scientific contributions from Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baker (Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington). ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Biotechnology, Drug Discovery & Development, Artificial Intelligence - **Target customers**: B2B (pharmaceutical partners, biotech collaborators) and ultimately patients via its own therapeutic pipeline. - **Mission or purpose statement**: "Pioneering the transformative artificial intelligence that will help discover and develop the next generation of life-changing medicines." [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/) ## Products & Services - **AI-Powered Drug Discovery Platform**: An end-to-end platform integrating advanced AI research, expansive data generation (functional genomics, proteomics, multi-omics), and robust therapeutic product development to shift drug discovery from an empirical science to a precise engineering discipline. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-approach) - **Computational Protein Design**: Built on foundational work by Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baker, leveraging AI to design entirely new proteins from scratch for previously undruggable targets. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-approach) - **X-Cell (Virtual Cell Model)**: An AI model trained on billions of genomic data points to simulate and understand cellular biology. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/) - **Therapeutic Pipeline**: A pipeline of differentiated therapeutics across multiple modalities (small molecules, biologics, protein therapeutics) developed through an integrated AI-driven process. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed. The company launched in 2023 with a $1 billion Series A financing, one of the largest in biotech history. - **Key Metric**: Total Funding of $1 billion (Series A, 2023). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: ARCH Venture Partners (co-founder and lead investor), Foresite Labs (co-founder and incubator), F-Prime Capital, and other top-tier investors. Board includes leaders from ARCH, Foresite, NEA, and Johnson & Johnson. Scientific advisors include Nobel Laureates Carolyn R. Bertozzi and David Baker, and other luminaries. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-team) - **Growth Signals**: Launched in 2023 with a record $1B Series A; rapidly building a world-class team across three global hubs (South San Francisco, Seattle, London); actively hiring across AI, computational biology, protein design, and drug development roles; announced X-Cell, a virtual cell model trained on billions of genomic data points. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/) ## Competitive Advantages - **Unprecedented Capital & Talent**: Launched with a $1B Series A, enabling aggressive hiring of top-tier AI and biology talent and long-term investment in infrastructure. - **End-to-End AI Integration**: Uniquely positioned to apply AI across the entire drug discovery and development lifecycle, from target identification to clinical development, creating a powerful data flywheel. - **World-Class Scientific Foundation**: Built on foundational AI protein design work from Nobel Laureate David Baker's lab, with a board and advisory board including multiple Nobel Laureates, former FDA commissioners, and industry leaders from Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, and top venture firms. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-team) - **Massive Data Generation**: Investing heavily in functional genomics and proteomics to generate proprietary, multi-dimensional datasets that fuel AI model development, creating a defensible data moat. ## Strategic Focus - **End-to-End AI Integration**: Building predictive and agentic AI models across the complete drug discovery and development spectrum to increase probability of success, reduce timelines, and lower costs. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-approach) - **Data as a Core Asset**: Generating and integrating massive, multi-dimensional biological datasets (from molecular to human scales) to train and improve AI models continuously. - **Pipeline Development**: Advancing a pipeline of differentiated therapeutics across multiple modalities (small molecules, biologics, protein therapeutics). - **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring across AI research, engineering, computational biology, protein design, and drug development to build a world-class, interdisciplinary team. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-Driven**: Opportunity to work at the forefront of AI and biology to fundamentally transform how medicines are discovered and developed, with the potential to impact millions of patients. - **World-Class Team & Mentorship**: Work alongside and learn from Nobel Laureates, top AI researchers, and experienced drug developers from leading pharma and biotech companies. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-team) - **Interdisciplinary Culture**: A unique blend of AI/ML engineers, protein designers, computational biologists, and drug hunters all working together in a highly collaborative environment. - **Global Hubs & Flexibility**: Offices in South San Francisco, Seattle, and London, offering multiple locations for talent. - **Generous Resources**: Backed by a $1B Series A, providing the resources to pursue ambitious, long-term research without short-term funding pressure. - **Job Scam Awareness**: The company has issued a warning about fraudulent job offers; all legitimate recruitment is conducted through official channels (Greenhouse) and never via Google Chat or requests for payment. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/work-with-us) ## Sources 1. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/) 2. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-approach) 3. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/our-team) 4. [xaira.com](https://www.xaira.com/work-with-us) 5. [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xairatherapeutics) ## Other roles at Xaira Therapeutics - [Senior Associate Scientist, High Throughput Protein Production](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-associate-scientist-high-throughput-protein-production-xaira-swgcd9st1mvn) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Scientist Single Cell Assay and Technology Development](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-scientist-single-cell-assay-and-technology-development-xaira-04cnkksa179e) — South San Francisco, CA - [Principal Scientist, Target Discovery & Portfolio Strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-scientist-target-discovery-portfolio-strategy-xaira-therapeutics-e1120npv099c) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Scientist, Antibody Characterization](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-scientist-antibody-characterization-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-28jxkpddcby2) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Project Manager, Biologics R&D - Early Pipeline Programs](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-project-manager-biologics-r-d-early-pipeline-programs-xaira-therapeutics-36myc85pkttj) — South San Francisco, CA - [Vice President, Clinical Development, Oncology](https://feeny.ai/job/vice-president-clinical-development-oncology-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-nwq8tfzcf3d0) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Director, Clinical Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-clinical-operations-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-francisco-nrx5ytj3me96) — South San Francisco, CA - [Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-scientist-protein-engineering-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-francisco-2dwzf5jmc3sv) — South San Francisco, CA - [Procurement Business Partner, Operations & AI](https://feeny.ai/job/procurement-business-partner-operations-ai-xaira-therapeutics-south-san-368fe4j3aymx) — South San Francisco, CA - [Research Associate / Senior Research Associate, Genomic Core](https://feeny.ai/job/research-associate-senior-research-associate-genomic-core-xaira-therapeutics-ds5ts7k1r4px) — South San Francisco, CA