Sr. Robotics Software Engineer, Controls

Aurelius Systems•San Francisco, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Aurelius Systems is a VC-backed defense tech startup focused on developing autonomous, edge-deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS (unmanned aerial systems). The company is building laser weapons to neutralize drones and aims to be the first to offer a cost-effective, reliable, and robust laser weapon system. The team comprises engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts. Aurelius Systems operates with a philosophy of small teams, high output, and a focus on immediate tasks, similar to Marcus Aurelius's principles. The company has a lab in San Francisco, a manufacturing hub in Detroit, and conducts weekly field tests on its private 400-acre range. This role is for a senior individual contributor on the controls team, focusing on precision motion. The engineer will be responsible for the entire precision motion stack, iterating rapidly on real hardware. The ideal candidate can take a model, implement it on hardware, characterize its performance, and refine the control loops. This involves owning the architecture and tuning of precision pointing and tracking control loops, the associated state estimation, and the closed-loop integration with the tracker.

Requirements

4+ years of experience in robotics
Strong knowledge of fundamentals: classical controls, state space, LQR, MPC
Proven simulation experience and a track record of managing the sim-to-real gap on actual hardware
Modern C++ for real time control implementation
Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, system ID, and analysis
State estimation in practice (Kalman, EKF, UKF, complementary filters)
System identification and frequency domain tuning
Direct experience with motion control hardware — servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, IMUs
Comfortable working at the seam between mechanical, electrical, and software
Understanding of latency, jitter, and how they kill control loop performance
Experience tuning hardware where simulation predictions differed from reality
Ability to characterize resonance, model an actuator, or handle sensor inaccuracies

Nice To Haves

Advanced MPC — nonlinear MPC, robust MPC, or real-time NMPC on resource constrained hardware
Gimbal, beam director, or precision pointing system experience
Aerospace, defense, or directed energy controls background
Adaptive or robust control implementation in production
Vision-in-the-loop control (visual servoing, image-based tracking)
Hardware-in-the-loop simulation experience
High bandwidth sensor pipelines (cameras, radar, IMUs at high rate)
Prior work on a system that had to hit a moving target

Responsibilities

Architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops
Closed loop tracking from sensor input through actuator command at hundreds of Hz
State estimation across IMU, encoder, and vision based feedback (Kalman filters, complementary filters, sensor fusion)
System identification and modeling of the gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics
Actuator tuning, gain scheduling, and compensation for nonlinearities (backlash, friction, saturation)
Resonance characterization, notch filtering, and structural compensation
Simulation infrastructure for controls development
Hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure for controls validation
Field characterization of the system against real targets at the range
Author controls documentation and tuning standards