Senior Robotics Engineer, Controls

About the Role Join a small defense technology team building autonomous directed-energy systems. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion controls stack, from system modeling and state estimation through real-time implementation and field validation. What You'll Do Architect and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops for closed-loop operation at hundreds of hertz. Integrate sensor inputs and actuator commands, using state estimation to fuse IMU, encoder, and vision feedback. Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then tune actuators and compensate for nonlinearities such as backlash, friction, and saturation. Characterize structural resonances and develop filtering and compensation approaches. Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to validate controls and reduce the sim-to-real gap. Conduct field characterization, document control designs, and establish tuning standards. What We're Looking For At least 4 years of robotics experience, including hands-on design and tuning of closed-loop controllers on physical 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, and structural resonance characterization. Modern C++ for real-time control, and Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis. Experience with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, and an understanding of latency and jitter in real-time systems. Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, and validating controls on actual hardware. Experience with gimbals, precision pointing, moving platforms, or target tracking is useful. Compensation & Benefits Base salary: $180,000 to $200,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available. Location On-site in San Francisco, California, with range days.