Senior / Staff Robotics Controls Engineer

RoboForce•Milpitas, CA

3d•$190,000 - $265,000•Onsite

About The Position

RoboForce is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI-powered Robo-Labor for dull, dirty, and dangerous work. Its robots are engineered for demanding industrial environments, with a focus on real-world deployment and scalability. The Senior / Staff Robotics Controls Engineer turns operator and planner intent into predictable physical behavior by developing and deploying control software for motion and interaction. The work may include Cartesian control, coordinated motion, and compliance, and is closely connected to the hardware. The engineer will address real sensing, actuation, timing, and contact challenges; measure robot behavior; and collaborate with software and hardware engineers to deliver useful behavior beyond demonstrations. This is a full-time U.S. position requiring five days per week of in-office collaboration with the teams. Compensation is a base salary of $190,000–$265,000 USD, plus bonus and equity. Final compensation depends on role scope, level, location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training, and may fall outside the range in exceptional cases.

Requirements

BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience implementing and debugging feedback controllers on manipulators, mobile robots, or comparable physical motion systems.
Strong understanding of feedback control, kinematics, dynamics, stability, and model uncertainty.
Substantial experience in one or more of Cartesian control, whole-body coordination, impedance/admittance, force control, or related methods.
Strong C++ skills and practical Python experience for analysis, experimentation, and tooling.
Ability to connect observed behavior to sensing, actuation, timing, software, and model assumptions.
Ability to take a control workstream from formulation and implementation through measured hardware validation.
Ability to collaborate with teams in the office five days per week.

Nice To Haves

Experience with whole-body optimization, task prioritization, or mobile manipulation.
Experience with contact-rich tasks, force sensing, or compliant manipulation.
Experience with ROS 2 or comparable robotics middleware.
Experience with real-time software, control performance analysis, or constrained computing platforms.
Experience maintaining controller behavior on deployed robots beyond initial demonstrations.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and tune controllers for joint, Cartesian, or coordinated robot motion according to task and hardware needs.
Integrate control with kinematics, dynamics, task priorities, and practical actuator or workspace limits.
Develop interaction behavior for tasks requiring impedance, admittance, force, or other compliance methods.
Implement controller behavior for command-source changes, mode transitions, stale inputs, stopping, and recovery under agreed system contracts.
Build maintainable C++ control software, accounting for timing, concurrency, resource use, and diagnostic evidence.
Design experiments and analyze data to investigate tracking, oscillation, saturation, friction, sensing, and model mismatch.
Work with planning, platform, teleoperation, and test engineers to validate complete workflows and maintain controller regression coverage.