Contract Robotic Simulation Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Company Overview

Parallel Domain is the trusted sensor simulation and reconstruction software for physical AI. We turn customer capture data into real-fidelity replicas with deterministic multi-sensor simulation running on top. The largest autonomy programs in the world use our products to validate perception at the scale that safety demands.

They are a Series B company backed by March Capital, Foundry Group, Costanoa Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and others. Their team includes engineers from Waymo, Cruise, Apple, NVIDIA, and Google. They are fully remote and growing fast.

How long has the company been operating? 2017

Total company headcount: 50+

Our mission is to enable our customers to bring autonomy and physical AI to the world faster and safer. We believe physical AI and autonomy have the power to create a safer and more productive world, and we are building the simulation infrastructure to make that future real. Our high-fidelity, fully controllable, software-in-the-loop sensor simulation products give the leaders in autonomous driving, drone delivery, eVTOL, robotics, and beyond the realism, accuracy, and confidence they need to test and validate their systems at scale. In autonomy and physical AI, there is no margin for error.

We are hiring a Product Manager to work directly with our Chief Product Officer in managing our suite of simulation and neural reconstruction products. This role will be an exciting blend of hands-on product work, customer interactions, and strategic product roadmapping.

This is a highly technical role. Our users are AI developers and our product heavily leverages cutting edge simulation technologies. This role requires expertise in AI development, simulation technologies, product management, and programming. By spending significant time with our customers, including automotive, drone, and robotics companies, you will become an expert in how our customers need to use simulation to accelerate their development of autonomous systems and then put this expertise at work to help Parallel Domain build winning products.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguous environments, enjoys solving complex technical challenges, and can translate customer needs into scalable product capabilities.

• Work with the Product Team to drive strategy and execution for Parallel Domain's core products, from customer discovery and roadmap definition through launch, adoption, and measurable business impact.
• Develop a deep understanding of customer workflows across autonomy, robotics, computer vision, and simulation teams, including how customers collect data, train perception systems, evaluate model performance, and validate behavior before real-world deployment.
• Contribute to roadmap / quarterly planning across Product and Engineering teams.
• Define and track success metrics for your product area, such as customer adoption, workflow efficiency, data generation throughput, scenario coverage, model performance lift, platform reliability, and revenue impact.
• Translate complex technical and customer needs into clear product direction, distinguishing between one-off feature requests, underlying workflow problems, and durable platform opportunities.
• Communicate roadmaps, priorities, experiments, and decisions clearly across a wide spectrum of audiences from internal customers to executives.
• Create clarity in ambiguous technical domains, breaking down open-ended problems into actionable plans, crisp priorities, and decisions that align customer value, technical feasibility, and company strategy.
• Represent the voice of the customer internally, bringing evidence-backed product insights to engineering and leadership so the company builds the highest-impact capabilities for the market.
• Collaborate on launch planning and enablement, including documentation, demos, sales materials, release notes, and internal training that help customers and customer-facing teams get value from new products.
• Stay close to the evolving autonomy, robotics, synthetic data, and AI infrastructure markets, using industry trends and competitive insights to inform roadmap decisions and identify new product opportunities.
• Travel to customer sites to better understand workflows, challenges, and product needs.

• 3+ years of product management experience delivering highly impactful and innovative platform or infrastructure products at scale, ideally with API offerings.
• Experience working in a B2B enterprise environment.
• Have a working understanding of machine learning frameworks, embodied AI development, and simulation.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Entrepreneurial sense of ownership: leads product development from zero to first release and beyond with full accountability of the outcomes.
• Proven track record to partner effectively across functions, with the ability to gain shared vision on decisions, resources, and priority trade-offs.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage both technical and executive stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• An ability to thrive in open-ended, ambiguous environments, bringing structure to complex problems and turning them into clear plans.
• Must be willing to travel to sit with customers.

• 2+ years as a software developer, engineer, or related technical role.
• A degree in computer science, engineering, or related field.
• Experience as a Technical Program Manager, Technical Account Manager, or Customer Engineering Lead at a simulation, developer tools, or autonomous systems company.
• Familiarity with closed-loop simulation, scenario-based testing, or sensor-in-the-loop workflows.