Research Engineer

Autodesk · Boston, MA, USA

onsitefull-time3-6 years

posted 13 Aug

Job Requisition ID # 26WD97952 The Autodesk Research Team Autodesk Research partners with academia, industry, and government to explore the future of design, engineering, and manufacturing. Our teams combine scientific rigor with creative exploration to transform ideas into technologies that empower people to make anything. The Manufacturing Industry Futures team investigates how data, automation, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies can improve the way physical products are designed , engineered, manufactured, and inspected. Position Overview Autodesk Research is seeking a Research Engineer with a strong understanding of manufacturing processes and an interest in applying artificial intelligence, data-driven methods, and automation to real-world manufacturing challenges. Based at the Autodesk Technology Center in Boston, you will design and run applied research experiments that connect digital models, manufacturing processes, physical equipment, production data, and intelligent software. This role requires knowledge of how physical products are manufactured. You should understand the principles, constraints, inputs, outputs, and trade-offs of multiple manufacturing methods, such as machining, forming, casting, molding, joining, assembly, inspection, and additive manufacturing. Direct experience operating every type of equipment is not required, but you must be able to reason about manufacturing processes and work effectively with specialists who operate them. You will also work with manufacturing and experimental data to investigate how AI can support areas such as process planning, parameter selection, simulation, quality, anomaly detection, workflow automation, and engineering decision-making. You do not need to be a foundational AI researcher. However, you should have begun applying machine learning, generative AI, agentic systems, or other data-driven techniques to engineering, manufacturing, or physical systems. This is not a pure software-development role, a robotics-only role, or a position focused exclusively on additive manufacturing. Robotics, software, and additive manufacturing may form part of the work, but successful candidates will bring broader knowledge of manufacturing processes and systems. We support hybrid work, and you will work from our Boston, Massachusetts office. What You Will Do  Design, build, and run applied research experiments focused on manufacturing processes, systems, and technologies.  Develop experimental workflows connecting design, engineering, simulation, manufacturing, inspection, sensing, automation, and production data.  Apply AI and data-driven methods to manufacturing problems such as process planning, parameter optimization, anomaly detection, quality prediction, simulation feedback, workflow automation, and decision support.  Collect, structure, analyze, and interpret data from manufacturing processes, machines, sensors, simulations, inspections, and experiments.  Compare manufacturing methods and evaluate their process capabilities, limitations, material considerations, quality requirements, and production trade-offs.  Build research prototypes that integrate software, hardware, data, and physical manufacturing processes.  Plan and conduct experiments using appropriate research methods, controls, measurements, and evaluation criteria.  Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI, digital twins, simulation, machine perception, robotics, sensing, and industrial automation, within manufacturing contexts.  Work with Technology Center specialists to conduct experiments involving processes such as machining, metal fabrication, joining, molding, forming, additive manufacturing, assembly, and inspection.  Collaborate with Autodesk researchers, engineers, Technology Center staff, industry partners, and academic institutions.  Contribute to research projects from problem definition and literature review through experimentation, prototyping, analysis, validation, a