Staff Robot Controls Integration Engineer
On-siteMountain View Santa Clara County, California, United States
Job Summary
Integrate motor control stacks, real-time communication protocols, and sensing systems into a cohesive platform that performs reliably in demanding field conditions. Validate control behavior across the full stack by taking strategies from MATLAB/Simulink into real-time firmware on microcontrollers and Linux systems. Diagnose timing and performance issues through dynamic testing, Bode analysis, and closed-loop validation to ensure stability margins and bandwidth. Build hardware-in-the-loop test benches that simulate robot dynamics, inject faults, and automate repeatable tests to catch control instability early. Profile latency paths across the stack to identify and close timing violations degrading control quality. When robots exhibit unexpected behavior, methodically isolate root causes between control laws, firmware implementation, or communication delays to drive durable fixes.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or closely related engineering discipline
- 8+ Years of experience working on at least one of the following areas: Hands-on motor controls, Real-time systems and firmware, Communication protocols, Sensor integration and validation, HiL and SIL, Control theory
- Hands-on motor controls: You've implemented or tuned PID loops, field-oriented control, torque control, or trajectory tracking on real hardware. Comfortable reasoning about poles, stability, and bandwidth
- Real-time systems and firmware: You understand interrupt latency, real-time constraints, and the gap between algorithm and implementation. Experience with real-time Linux, microcontroller programming, or RTOS
- Communication protocols: Solid experience with CAN, CAN FD, or EtherCAT — protocol analysis, debugging, timing verification. Familiar with CANoe, Vector tooling, or oscilloscope-based signal capture
- Sensor integration and validation: You've brought up encoders, IMUs, force/torque sensors. Understand aliasing, noise filtering, calibration, and how sensor delay cascades into control performance
- HiL and SIL: You design tests that matter — fault-injection tests that probe stability margins, saturation behavior, and graceful degradation. Experience with Simulink, FPGA platforms, or equivalent
- Control theory: You understand dynamics, Laplace transforms, Bode plots, poles and zeros. Can read a control diagram and reason about closed-loop behavior and system stability
Desired Qualifications
- Experience with EtherCAT, SOEM, Beckhoff hardware, or TwinCAT real-time platforms
- Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, parameter identification, and control-system analysis
- Python or C++ for test automation, firmware tooling, and data post-processing
- Experience with motor characterization: cogging torque analysis, friction modeling, thermal dynamics
- Familiarity with functional safety standards and how control performance ties into safety requirements
- Prior experience supporting fielded systems, turning customer-reported instabilities into durable firmware fixes
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