About this role
About the Role
Join a small engineering team developing autonomous directed-energy systems in the defense sector. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion control stack, helping deliver reliable pointing and tracking performance on real hardware.
What You'll Do
- Architect and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops, including closed-loop sensor-to-actuator control at hundreds of hertz.
- Develop state estimation and sensor fusion using IMU, encoder, and vision feedback.
- Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then compensate for resonance, friction, backlash, and saturation.
- Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to develop and validate controls.
- Characterize system performance on hardware and in field tests, and document controls standards and tuning practices.
What We're Looking For
- At least 4 years of robotics experience, including hands-on design and tuning of closed-loop controllers on motion hardware.
- Strong grounding in classical and state-space controls, including LQR and MPC, plus practical state estimation using Kalman-family or complementary filters.
- Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, structural resonance compensation, and closing the simulation-to-hardware gap.
- Modern C++ for real-time control, and Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis.
- Direct experience with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, as well as real-time latency and jitter constraints.
- Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, and software engineering; gimbal, precision-pointing, tracking, or defense systems experience is relevant.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $180,000 to $200,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States.