Field Application Engineer – Robotics MCU & Motor Control

NXP Semiconductors•San Jose, CA

4d•$166,200 - $228,500•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a highly motivated, experienced engineer to join our FAE team supporting the rapidly growing robotics market — humanoids, drones, and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) platforms. You will help our customers design and deploy NXP MCUs, real-time crossover processors, and motor-control silicon into the heart of next-generation robotic systems — driving brushless motors, servo joints, dexterous hands, and high-precision control. You will join a collaborative, passionate team that values creativity, open communication, and having fun while solving tough problems together developing leading-edge hardware & software solutions. We support flexible work arrangements and a healthy work-life balance. This role can be based in San Jose, CA, the greater Boston, MA area, or Austin, TX — joining an experienced robotics team already established in each location and connected to NXP's broader engineering, marketing, and R&D community across the Americas.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechatronics, Computer Science or equivalent.
10+ years in embedded systems development or applications support of microcontroller-based motor-control or motion-control systems, with demonstrated technical leadership.
Proficient in C/C++ firmware development and debugging with ARM Cortex-M (Cortex-R/A a plus) microcontrollers.
Hands-on experience with motor-control fundamentals: field-oriented control (FOC), space-vector modulation, sensored and sensorless commutation, and current/speed/position loop design, with a focus on robotics applications.
Strong working knowledge of motor-control peripherals: high-resolution PWM timers, high-speed and simultaneous-sampling ADCs, sigma-delta modulators, op-amps, comparators, resolvers and quadrature decoders.
Experience with adjacent power-system topics — high-cell-count battery management, 48V system architectures, gate drivers, and power-stage integration.
Familiarity with brushless motor topologies (BLDC, PMSM, coreless / cup motors) and common feedback elements — Hall, magnetic, optical, inductive, sin/cos, and absolute / incremental encoders.
Hands-on proficiency with oscilloscopes, current probes, power analyzers, and motor-control debug/trace tools.
Experience optimizing PCB design for high-current, high-dv/dt motor-drive environments, including EMC/EMI for noisy power-stage layouts.
Strong troubleshooting skills with schematic review, signal analysis, and lab tools.
Excellent verbal and written communication for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Demonstrated leadership and ability to operate autonomously
Willing to travel, primarily within North America.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with real-time motion-control communication: CAN FD / CAN SIC / CAN XL, RS485, I3C, EtherCAT, and TSN-based motor synchronization.
Working knowledge of functional safety (ISO 26262, IEC 61508 / SIL 2–3) and cybersecurity (ISO 21434, IEC 62443) standards relevant to industrial and automotive motor-control systems, including lockstep / dual-core architectures, watchdog, error-correction, and recovery strategies.
Familiarity with secure-boot, secure key storage, and secure-element integration for tamper-resistant drives and authenticated firmware updates.
Familiarity with ARM Cortex MCUs and RTOS platforms (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, NuttX) used in real-time motor control.

Responsibilities

Provide technical leadership to sales teams and customers covering motor-control architecture, MCU and processor selection, bring-up, and software stack integration for NXP general-purpose, real-time, and crossover MCUs and processors targeting robotics platforms.
Act as the system-level expert for robotic actuation subsystems, ensuring tight coordination between distributed motor-control nodes and higher-level compute, perception, and motion-planning layers.
Drive architectures that scale from single-axis evaluation to multi-degree-of-freedom robotic systems (e.g., humanoids and AMRs) with synchronized, deterministic control.
Champion customer and market trend input for new product definition and design strategy via collaboration with product lines
Partner with customers on the design of joint modules, dexterous hands, servo drives, BLDC/PMSM motor drivers, and high-precision encoder subsystems — from silicon selection through control-loop tuning and system validation.
Design support through schematic and PCB reviews, bench bring-up, debugging, root-cause analysis, and customer troubleshooting on multi-axis and distributed motor-control systems.
Troubleshoot complex issues in the lab (schematics, board bring-up, software drivers, control-loop behavior) using oscilloscopes, current/voltage probes, power analyzers, and software debug/trace tools.
Perform validation and performance tuning for current, speed, and position control loops, encoder interfaces, and real-time motion-control communication links to meet the deterministic latency and synchronization requirements of robotics actuation.
Deliver on-site and remote proof-of-concept builds using NXP evaluation kits, motor-control reference designs, and motor-control SDK enablement, demonstrating end-to-end solutions for AMR, drone, and humanoid use cases.
Lead technical training — webinars, workshops, customer deep-dives, and internal alignment sessions — on NXP's robotics MCU and motor-control portfolio.