Autonomous Water-Robotics Control Engineer

ETH Zurich; Zürich; On-site; CHF 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Spin-off opportunity

Field testing at real sites

Job summary

ETH Zurich's Way of Water project seeks an early-career project-staff engineer to own how autonomous surface robots move, sense, and recover in real-world outdoor water environments. You will turn ideas into working software on real hardware and design experiments to validate your approaches.

The role emphasizes hands-on control, field days at Lake Zürich and partner sites, and collaboration with a team of robotics engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

Qualifications

• 0–5 years of hands-on experience after your degree (early-career project-staff role)
• Background in robotics, control, mechanical or electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent
• Experience shipping behaviour on real robots or cyber-physical systems, not only simulation
• Hands-on software development and debugging with real hardware (bench bring-up, field trials, logs)
• Comfort writing and debugging software that talks to hardware (C/C++, Python)
• Judgement under incomplete information; ability to measure, decide and iterate
• Appetite for outdoor and on-water testing (Lake Zürich and partner sites)
• Independent working style and documentation habits to scale a small team

Responsibilities

• Own the behaviour of physical robots: movement, intent, coordination and graceful failure
• Turn ideas into working software on real hardware and harden it via experiments you design and run
• Work at the seams with sensors, actuators, mechanical limits and electrical realities
• Make testing and commissioning repeatable and reliable for the team
• Share learnings with clear notes and teachable setups for students and colleagues

Skills

C/C++

Python

Robotics

ROS/ROS 2

Embedded systems

Field testing

Education

Degree in robotics/engineering/computer science

Tools

ROS 2

Job description

ETH Zurich's Way of Water project seeks an early-career project-staff engineer to own how autonomous surface robots move, sense, and recover in real-world outdoor water environments. You will turn ideas into working software on real hardware and design experiments to validate your approaches.

The role emphasizes hands-on control, field days at Lake Zürich and partner sites, and collaboration with a team of robotics engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.