Senior Robotics Engineer, Controls
Clera · San Francisco · $180,000–$200,000 (stated in the posting)
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
Design and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops, including closed-loop control from sensor input to actuator command.
Build state estimation and sensor fusion across IMUs, encoders, and vision feedback.
Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then compensate for resonance, backlash, friction, saturation, and other nonlinearities.
Develop simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to validate controls and reduce the sim-to-real gap.
Characterize system performance on hardware and during field testing, and document control designs and tuning standards.
What We're Looking For
At least 4 years of robotics experience, including designing and tuning closed-loop controllers on physical motion hardware.
Strong grounding in classical and state-space control, including LQR and MPC, with experience applying these methods to real systems.
Hands-on state estimation and sensor fusion experience using Kalman, EKF, UKF, or complementary filters.
Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, resonance compensation, and managing latency and jitter in real-time loops.
Modern C++ for real-time control, plus Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis.
Familiarity with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, and the ability to work across mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines.
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.
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