Principal Robotic Controls Engineer

The role

You will own beam control and tracking math for autonomous directed energy systems. This includes designing control architecture, target state estimation, and line-of-sight stabilization for laser weapons.

What you will do

• Own control architecture for the beam director
• Develop target state estimation using Kalman, IMM and nonlinear filters
• Manage line-of-sight stabilization and jitter rejection
• Manage the pointing error budget and achieve microradian precision on the outdoor range
• Perform plant modeling and system identification
• Conduct robustness and stability analysis
• Integrate fire control sequencing and safety interlocks
• Iterate rapidly from simulator to hardware implementation
• Perform technical review and risk assessment
• Provide mentorship by example

Required qualifications

• PhD in Control Systems, Electrical, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, Applied Math, or a related field, with a dissertation in control or estimation theory
• OR an MS plus a research-grade record of theory work put on fielded hardware
• 10+ years closing loops on precision pointing, tracking or stabilization hardware, PhD research included
• Experience with microradian-class line-of-sight work
• Hands-on system identification and plant modeling
• Real-time implementation in C or C++ on embedded or RTOS targets

Nice to have

• Directed energy weapon or high energy laser program experience
• Adaptive optics: wavefront sensing, deformable mirror control, turbulence modeling
• Atmospheric propagation and beam wander modeling
• MATLAB/Simulink to production code generation, or Python and C++ toolchains
• 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

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

Before you apply

• Requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status

About the company

Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. They build laser weapons to shoot down drones.