Principal Robotic Controls Engineer

The Role & Your Impact

We need a Principal Controls Engineer who owns the math behind putting a laser on a drone and keeping it there.

You'll own beam control and tracking as a theory domain across the whole system: the nested coarse and fine pointing architecture, the estimators that fuse radar cues, EO/IR track and inertial data, the jitter and latency budgets, and the analysis that says what the system can and cannot hit before we drive to the range to find out. You'll partner with the perception, optics and mechanical leads on architecture and roadmap, and you'll be the senior technical voice on controls decisions inside the company.

You'll derive the loop, run it in our in-house simulator, and have it on the hardware in days, not weeks. Then you'll stand on our outdoor range, control and refine laser positioning yourself, and watch it hold microradian precision on a maneuvering drone.

What You'll Own

• Control architecture for the beam director: coarse gimbal and fine steering mirror loop structure, bandwidth allocation, multi-rate design, and the handoff between stages
• Target state estimation: Kalman, IMM and nonlinear filters that fuse radar cue, EO/IR track and inertial data into a predicted aimpoint, with latency compensation designed in, not patched on
• Line-of-sight stabilization and jitter rejection: inertial stabilization, accelerometer feedforward, notch and adaptive filtering for structural modes, and the control-structure interaction analysis behind them
• The pointing error budget and the field result: jitter, bias, latency and atmospheric terms allocated across the system, then microradian pointing precision achieved and held on our outdoor range against dynamic, real-world targets through hands-on experimentation and deployment
• Plant modeling and system identification: frequency-domain and time-domain ID of gimbal, mirror and structure, hardware-in-the-loop validation, and the models our in-house simulators run on
• Robustness and stability analysis: margins, sensitivity, worst-case disturbance and parameter variation, with the proof, not just the Bode plot
• Fire control integration: cue to track to engage handoff, engagement sequencing, dwell and aimpoint maintenance logic, and safety interlocks with the laser team
• Rapid iteration from simulator to hardware: control algorithms out of the sim and onto the system in days, kHz-rate loops on embedded targets with the software team, and the test campaign that shows field data matches the prediction
• Technical review and risk: catching what others miss in controls, estimation and sensor integration across the system
• Mentorship by example. Engineers learn from watching you work, not from being managed by you

What We're Looking for

• PhD-level depth in control theory and estimation. You can derive and defend the architecture, not just tune it: robust control (H-infinity, mu-synthesis, LQG), optimal estimation (Kalman variants, IMM, nonlinear observers), multi-rate and sampled-data design, adaptive and learning-based disturbance rejection
• 10+ years closing loops on precision pointing, tracking or stabilization hardware, PhD research included, on systems that had to meet a measured spec in the field
• Microradian-class line-of-sight work: beam directors, fine steering mirrors, gimbaled EO/IR sensors, laser comm pointing-acquisition-tracking terminals, telescope or spacecraft pointing, or precision mechatronics at equivalent precision
• Hands-on system identification and plant modeling against real structural dynamics, and a record of models that predicted what the hardware then did
• Real-time implementation chops. You've shipped loops in C or C++ on embedded or RTOS targets, or worked tightly with the engineers who did, and you know what latency and quantization do to your margins
• Comfort being the technical anchor for controls on a small team, not the manager of a large one

Additional information

Where you probably come from: Directed energy or beam control programs at primes and government labs (AFRL, MIT Lincoln Lab, NRL, APL, Sandia), laser communications terminal teams, EO/IR gimbal and stabilized-sensor houses, telescope or spacecraft precision pointing, adaptive optics groups, or a controls PhD group that transitioned its work onto real hardware.

We want to talk if: You've owned the jitter budget on a pointing system, held microradian precision in the field against moving targets, and the data matched your prediction. Your dissertation was in estimation, robust or adaptive control and you've since put that math on hardware that shipped. You can write the proof and the C++ in the same week.

Not a fit if: Your controls experience is PID tuning from a block library without the theory to say why it works. You're a theorist who has never closed a loop on real hardware, or a manager without recent hands-on work.

Nice-to-haves

• Directed energy weapon or high energy laser program experience
• Adaptive optics: wavefront sensing, deformable mirror control, turbulence modeling (Greenwood frequency, tilt statistics)
• Atmospheric propagation and beam wander modeling
• MATLAB/Simulink to production code generation, or Python and C++ toolchains for control design and hardware-in-the-loop
• Publications or patents in control, estimation or precision pointing
• Founder or founding engineer background at a hardware company
• Familiarity with MIL-STD standards and ITAR compliance
• Active security clearance or ability to obtain one

Education

PhD in Control Systems, Electrical, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, Applied Math, or a related field, with a dissertation in control or estimation theory. An MS plus a research-grade record of theory work put on fielded hardware can substitute.

How You Operate

• Extreme bias for action. You'd rather prove the margin and test it this week than model it for a quarter
• You characterize your own systems before the field does
• Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
• You debug from first principles. When the field data disagrees with the model, you find out which one is wrong
• Clear communicator across optics, mechanical, software, perception and ML teams, including explaining the math to people who don't have it
• Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told

How We Work

Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up: nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity
• United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
• Travel to field test events and range days
• Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
• E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
• Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work

Export Control Notice

This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. 1324b(a)(3).