Senior Robotics Engineer, Controls

San Franciscofull timeOn Sitesenior$180k–$200kH1B: no

Clera Senior Robotics Engineer, Controls at Clera to develop precision motion control for autonomous directed-energy systems. Responsible for control loop design, state estimation, and hardware validation.

Responsibilities

Join a small engineering team developing autonomous directed-energy systems in the defense sector. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion control stack, helping deliver reliable pointing and tracking performance on real hardware.
Architect and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops, including closed-loop sensor-to-actuator control at hundreds of hertz.
Develop state estimation and sensor fusion using IMU, encoder, and vision feedback.
Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then compensate for resonance, friction, backlash, and saturation.
Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to develop and validate controls.
Characterize system performance on hardware and in field tests, and document controls standards and tuning practices.

Qualification

At least 4 years of robotics experienceExperience with system identificationModern C++ for real-time controlDirect experience with servo drivesComfort working across mechanicalExperience with gimbal

Required

At least 4 years of robotics experience, including hands-on design and tuning of closed-loop controllers on motion hardware.
Strong grounding in classical and state-space controls, including LQR and MPC, plus practical state estimation using Kalman-family or complementary filters.
Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, structural resonance compensation, and closing the simulation-to-hardware gap.