OpenAI
AI & Machine LearningDirect Ashby career site

Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics

Location
San Francisco, CA · On-site
Job type
Full-time
Level
Senior
Listed
30 days ago

Skills & highlights for this role

  • real-time control algorithms
  • motion control
  • state estimation

Also useful

  • reinforcement learning

About the Role

We’re looking for a Robotics Control Systems Engineer to take on a foundational role within our robotics team. You’ll help architect, implement, tune, and verify the control infrastructure that enables intelligent, reliable, and responsive robot behavior.

This is a deeply hands-on role focused on real-time systems, actuation, dynamics, low-level hardware interaction, and whole-robot performance. You’ll spend significant time working directly with robots onsite: debugging behavior, tuning subsystems, running experiments, and providing feedback across mechanical, electrical, and software teams.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 5 days a week.

In this role, you will

  • Design and implement real-time control algorithms for robotic systems, including motion control, feedback loops, state estimation, actuator control, and subsystem tuning.
  • Define the control architecture from low-level actuators and hardware interfaces through whole-robot behavior and policy.
  • Identify and characterize actuator, hardware, and software parameters through rigorous experimentation, testing, commissioning, and verification.
  • Work with machine learning engineers to implement reinforcement learning models.
  • Collaborate across mechanical, electrical, and software teams to integrate control logic with sensing and actuation hardware.
  • Help inform the mechanical and electrical design to maximize capability and flexibility.
  • Create the control system architecture; determine the correct level of abstraction from actuators all the way up to whole-robot policy.

You might thrive in this role if you

  • Have a strong robotics background, including manipulators, mobile robots, or other complex physical systems.
  • Have experience with actuation, control systems, robot dynamics, estimation, subsystem tuning, or whole-body motion.
  • Are comfortable being hands-on with robotic hardware, including commissioning, debugging, testing, and iterating on real robots.
  • Have strong fundamentals in classical control, system dynamics, and estimation, with exposure to modern learning-based or reinforcement learning approaches.
  • Can move comfortably across the stack, from low-level actuator behavior and hardware interfaces to higher-level algorithms and whole-robot performance.
  • Have experience writing performant production-quality software in C++ or Rust.
  • Experience with robotic hardware and enjoy iterating quickly between simulation and real-world testing environments.

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

Read the original posting

From OpenAI's careers page, first listed on Rolev.ai on October 10, 2026. Rolev.ai is not the employer.

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Common questions

Where is the Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics job at OpenAI located?

This Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics position at OpenAI is located in San Francisco, CA (On-site). Always check OpenAI's application page for specific state eligibility or relocation policies.

What qualifications are required for Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics at OpenAI?

For the Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics role, OpenAI highlights experience with real-time control algorithms, motion control, state estimation. Rolev.ai can score your existing resume against these requirements and show any skill gaps before you apply.

How do I apply for the Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics position at OpenAI?

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