About this role
About the Role
Join a small engineering team at a defense technology company developing autonomous systems to counter drone threats. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion control stack, from control architecture and state estimation to hardware testing and field characterization.
What You'll Do
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Design and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops, including closed-loop control from sensor input to actuator command.
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Build state estimation and sensor fusion across IMUs, encoders, and vision feedback.
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Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then compensate for resonance, backlash, friction, saturation, and other nonlinearities.
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Develop simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to validate controls and reduce the sim-to-real gap.
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Characterize system performance on hardware and during field testing, and document control designs and tuning standards.
What We're Looking For
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At least 4 years of robotics experience, including designing and tuning closed-loop controllers on physical motion hardware.
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Strong grounding in classical and state-space control, including LQR and MPC, with experience applying these methods to real systems.
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Hands-on state estimation and sensor fusion experience using Kalman, EKF, UKF, or complementary filters.
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Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, resonance compensation, and managing latency and jitter in real-time loops.
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Modern C++ for real-time control, plus Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis.
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Familiarity with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, and the ability to work across mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines.
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Experience building control simulations and validating them against hardware.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $180,000 to $200,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States.