Controls & Systems-Design Consultant

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

22d•$175 - $225•Hybrid

About The Position

Astera is a private foundation focused on advancing science and technology towards an abundant future. They operate projects like high-velocity startups to achieve ambitious goals and attract top talent. The Astera Institute is seeking a Controls & Systems-Design Consultant to define the control-system architecture and requirements for the Gen-1 DNA-origami electrostatic actuator. This early-stage, fractional engagement involves influencing device-physics and molecular-design decisions to ensure the actuator is observable and controllable from the outset. The consultant will set closed-loop and system-identification constraints during critical design phases. This position reports to Dr. Jeremy Barton and is a contract role.

Requirements

PhD or MS (or equivalent industry depth) in controls, robotics, electrical engineering, or a related field, with hands-on closed-loop control-system design.
Track record translating plant and sensor characteristics into design constraints, ideally for noisy, nanoscale, or precision-instrumentation systems.
Strength in system identification and estimation (Kalman filters / observers) and in specifying data capture for later modeling.
Comfort advising a physics and wet-lab team fractionally, with occasional on-site collaboration in Emeryville.

Nice To Haves

Surprising problem-solver – you love finding unexpected solutions to problems we don't even know we have, and see options where others only see constraints.
High standards, internally driven – you hold yourself to the bar of building world-class public goods without benchmarking against others.
Embrace the tools that define great work today – Astera is building for an AI-driven future and equips the team accordingly; we see these as genuine force multipliers, not optional extras.

Responsibilities

Define the control-system requirements and constraints for the DNA Origami actuator–sensor system, including sensor bandwidth, noise floor, and latency; actuator drive-signal range and dynamics; and end-to-end observability, and feed them into the device-physics and DNA-origami design decisions early.
Review the field-effect (FET) position-sensor and electrostatic drive-stack designs through a controls lens, flagging choices that would make the system hard to stabilize, identify, or estimate.
Specify what the early ensemble and single-molecule experiments must log (sampling, excitation, metadata) so the data is usable for later system identification and ML modeling of the device response.
Sketch the closed-loop control architecture and a simulation/estimation plan (feedback stabilization, averaging, observers) that the incoming full-time Controls engineer will implement.
Provide a clean, documented handoff to the team.