Robotics R&D Engineer: Real-Time Arm Control & RL Hardware

Insight Global; Redmond; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Insight Global is seeking an experienced robotics controls engineer to design, implement, and tune real-time controllers for robot arms and hands. You will bring up hardware, develop high-rate control loops, and integrate teleoperation and data-collection pipelines.

Your work includes system identification, sim-to-real gap analysis, and data-driven reporting. Strong programming skills in C++ and Python, plus ROS 2 experience and a solid background in robot dynamics, are essential.

Qualifications

• BS in Mechanical, Electrical, or Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience implementing and tuning controllers on real robot hardware.
• Strong grounding in robot dynamics and control: rigid-body dynamics, impedance/admittance control, operational-space control, stability and bandwidth analysis.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python.
• Experience with ROS 2 (ros2_control preferred) and real-time Linux-based robot systems.
• Experience with experimental data analysis: designing tests, fitting models, and interpreting frequency- and time-domain responses.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and tune real-time controllers for robot arms and multi-fingered hands.
• Bring up new robot hardware: ros2_control hardware interfaces and drivers, high-rate control loops, fault handling and safety limits, and integration with teleoperation and data-collection pipelines.
• Perform system identification of arms and hands.
• Validate controller and model accuracy against hardware, quantify and reduce the sim-to-real gaps.
• Build controller and hardware benchmarks and produce clear, data-driven reports.
• Partner closely with policy researchers to deploy RL and behavior-cloning policies on hardware — tune the controller/policy interface, diagnose failures, and close the loop on training-environment fidelity.
• Write clean, tested code and document systems for a cross-functional team.

Skills

C++

Python

ROS 2

Real-time Linux

Robot dynamics

System identification

Education

BS in Mechanical, Electrical, or Computer Engineering, Robotics, or related field

Tools

ros2_control

MuJoCo

Isaac

domain randomization

Job description

Insight Global is seeking an experienced robotics controls engineer to design, implement, and tune real-time controllers for robot arms and hands. You will bring up hardware, develop high-rate control loops, and integrate teleoperation and data-collection pipelines.

Your work includes system identification, sim-to-real gap analysis, and data-driven reporting. Strong programming skills in C++ and Python, plus ROS 2 experience and a solid background in robot dynamics, are essential.