Controls Engineer, Haptics & Teleoperation

About the role

You'll own control systems for our teleoperated robots, translating an operator's motion into stable, real-world robot behavior and sending contact forces back so the operator can feel them. You'll work on human-in-the-loop control where operator input must adapt to robotic platforms with different physical constraints, designing control strategies that keep operation intuitive while ensuring system stability and performance across configurations.

This is a hands-on role working directly with real hardware. You'll partner with our force, hardware and software leads to develop and deploy algorithms on physical systems, prioritizing real-world performance over simulation, and you'll take primary ownership of the control stack from research prototype through field deployment.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and development of control strategies that translate human input into coordinated robot motion
• Architect methods to maintain intuitive control across systems with different physical configurations, and set technical direction for how the team approaches cross-platform control
• Build, tune and maintain multi-DoF control systems on real robotic manipulators
• Design, implement and evaluate advanced control approaches (e.g., impedance and bilateral force control) and drive decisions on which techniques to adopt
• Ensure stable, consistent system behavior under varying dynamics, including defining test protocols and acceptance criteria
• Build and optimize the interfaces between operator, algorithms and hardware, balancing latency, stability and operator feel
• Work with and extend URDF models to represent robot structure and constraints accurately
• Integrate, test and debug systems on real robots, including root-causing hardware/software interaction issues
• Collaborate across teams to move approaches from research to deployment, and mentor interns or junior engineers contributing to the control stack

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field
• 2+ years of hands-on experience with multi-DoF robotic systems (e.g., robotic arms such as UR or Franka, multi-fingered hands, or multi-limb/humanoid platforms) in a professional or research setting
• Strong understanding of robot kinematics (forward/inverse kinematics, Jacobians) for multi-DoF systems
• Solid grounding in control systems (PID required; hands-on impedance or force control strongly preferred)
• Working understanding of robot dynamics (mass, inertia, torque relationships) and how they affect control tuning across many coupled joints
• Proficiency in Python and/or C++, with experience writing production-quality, maintainable control code
• Experience with URDF and robot modeling, including debugging model-to-hardware mismatches on multi-DoF systems
• A track record of debugging real physical systems, not just simulated ones
• Experience with teleoperation, haptics or human-in-the-loop control strongly preferred

Bonus

• Familiarity with ROS / ROS2 and robotics tooling (RViz, Gazebo, etc.)
• Exposure to biomechanics, human motor control or perception
• Prior experience taking a control system from research prototype to a field-deployed product on a multi-DoF or humanoid platform