Principal Robotic Controls Engineer at Aurelius Systems · LumiJobs

Responsibilities

We need a Principal Controls Engineer who owns the math behind putting a laser on a drone and keeping it there.
You'll own beam control and tracking as a theory domain across the whole system: the nested coarse and fine pointing architecture, the estimators that fuse radar cues, EO/IR track and inertial data, the jitter and latency budgets, and the analysis that says what the system can and cannot hit before we drive to the range to find out. You'll partner with the perception, optics and mechanical leads on architecture and roadmap, and you'll be the senior technical voice on controls decisions inside the company.
You'll derive the loop, run it in our in-house simulator, and have it on the hardware in days, not weeks. Then you'll stand on our outdoor range, control and refine laser positioning yourself, and watch it hold microradian precision on a maneuvering drone.
Control architecture for the beam director: coarse gimbal and fine steering mirror loop structure, bandwidth allocation, multi-rate design, and the handoff between stages
Target state estimation: Kalman, IMM and nonlinear filters that fuse radar cue, EO/IR track and inertial data into a predicted aimpoint, with latency compensation designed in, not patched on
Line-of-sight stabilization and jitter rejection: inertial stabilization, accelerometer feedforward, notch and adaptive filtering for structural modes, and the control-structure interaction analysis behind them
The pointing error budget and the field result: jitter, bias, latency and atmospheric terms allocated across the system, then microradian pointing precision achieved and held on our outdoor range against dynamic, real-world targets through hands-on experimentation and deployment
Plant modeling and system identification: frequency-domain and time-domain ID of gimbal, mirror and structure, hardware-in-the-loop validation, and the models our in-house simulators run on
Robustness and stability analysis: margins, sensitivity, worst-case disturbance and parameter variation, with the proof, not just the Bode plot
Fire control integration: cue to track to engage handoff, engagement sequencing, dwell and aimpoint maintenance logic, and safety interlocks with the laser team
Rapid iteration from simulator to hardware: control algorithms out of the sim and onto the system in days, kHz-rate loops on embedded targets with the software team, and the test campaign that shows field data matches the prediction
Technical review and risk: catching what others miss in controls, estimation and sensor integration across the system

Qualification

Microradian-class line-of-sight workReal-time implementation chopsWhere you probably come fromWe want to talk ifNot a fit ifAdaptive opticsPublications or patents in control

Required

PhD-level depth in control theory and estimation. You can derive and defend the architecture, not just tune it: robust control (H-infinity, mu-synthesis, LQG), optimal estimation (Kalman variants, IMM, nonlinear observers), multi-rate and sampled-data design, adaptive and learning-based disturbance rejection
10+ years closing loops on precision pointing, tracking or stabilization hardware, PhD research included, on systems that had to meet a measured spec in the field
Microradian-class line-of-sight work: beam directors, fine steering mirrors, gimbaled EO/IR sensors, laser comm pointing-acquisition-tracking terminals, telescope or spacecraft pointing, or precision mechatronics at equivalent precision
Hands-on system identification and plant modeling against real structural dynamics, and a record of models that predicted what the hardware then did
Real-time implementation chops. You've shipped loops in C or C++ on embedded or RTOS targets, or worked tightly with the engineers who did, and you know what latency and quantization do to your margins
Comfort being the technical anchor for controls on a small team, not the manager of a large one
Where you probably come from: Directed energy or beam control programs at primes and government labs (AFRL, MIT Lincoln Lab, NRL, APL, Sandia), laser communications terminal teams, EO/IR gimbal and stabilized-sensor houses, telescope or spacecraft precision pointing, adaptive optics groups, or a controls PhD group that transitioned its work onto real hardware.
We want to talk if: You've owned the jitter budget on a pointing system, held microradian precision in the field against moving targets, and the data matched your prediction. Your dissertation was in estimation, robust or adaptive control and you've since put that math on hardware that shipped. You can write the proof and the C++ in the same week.
Not a fit if: Your controls experience is PID tuning from a block library without the theory to say why it works. You've only worked at robot-arm or motor-drive precision. You're a theorist who has never closed a loop on real hardware, or a manager without recent hands-on work.

Preferred

Directed energy weapon or high energy laser program experience
Adaptive optics: wavefront sensing, deformable mirror control, turbulence modeling (Greenwood frequency, tilt statistics)
Atmospheric propagation and beam wander modeling
MATLAB/Simulink to production code generation, or Python and C++ toolchains for control design and hardware-in-the-loop
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

Principal Robotic Controls Engineer

Responsibilities

Qualification

Required

Preferred

Benefits

Company

Aurelius Systems

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