Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 380,000 - 460,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics in San Francisco to architect, implement, tune, and verify real-time control infrastructure for intelligent robot behavior. This hands-on role focuses on actuation, dynamics, and hardware interaction onsite five days a week.

You will collaborate across mechanical, electrical, and software teams, work with ML engineers on reinforcement learning models, and help shape whole-robot performance from low-level actuators up to high-level

Qualifications

• Strong robotics background with manipulators, mobile robots, or similar systems.
• Experience with actuation, control systems, dynamics, estimation, or whole-body motion.
• Hands-on with robotic hardware, including commissioning, debugging, testing, and iteration.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement real-time control algorithms for robotic systems, including motion control and state estimation.
• Define the control architecture from actuators to whole-robot behavior.
• Characterize parameters through experimentation, testing, and verification.
• Work with ML engineers to implement reinforcement learning models.
• Collaborate across mechanical, electrical, and software teams to integrate control with sensing and actuation.
• Inform mechanical/electrical design to maximize capability and flexibility.
• Create the control system architecture and abstraction levels from actuators to policy.

Skills

Real-time control

C++

Rust

Robotics background

Hardware interaction

Job description

Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics | OpenAI

Careers

Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics

Robotics - San Francisco

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general‑purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI‑level intelligence in dynamic, real‑world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting‑edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high‑level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Robotics Control Systems Engineer to take on a foundational role within our robotics team. You’ll help architect, implement, tune, and verify the control infrastructure that enables intelligent, reliable, and responsive robot behavior.

This is a deeply hands‑on role focused on real‑time systems, actuation, dynamics, low‑level hardware interaction, and whole‑robot performance. You’ll spend significant time working directly with robots onsite: debugging behavior, tuning subsystems, running experiments, and providing feedback across mechanical, electrical, and software teams.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in‑person 5 days a week.

In this role, you will:

• Design and implement real‑time control algorithms for robotic systems, including motion control, feedback loops, state estimation, actuator control, and subsystem tuning.
• Define the control architecture from low‑level actuators and hardware interfaces through whole‑robot behavior and policy.
• Identify and characterize actuator, hardware, and software parameters through rigorous experimentation, testing, commissioning, and verification.
• Work with machine learning engineers to implement reinforcement learning models.
• Collaborate across mechanical, electrical, and software teams to integrate control logic with sensing and actuation hardware.
• Help inform the mechanical and electrical design to maximize capability and flexibility.
• Create the control system architecture; determine the correct level of abstraction from actuators all the way up to whole‑robot policy.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have a strong robotics background, including manipulators, mobile robots, or other complex physical systems.
• Have experience with actuation, control systems, robot dynamics, estimation, subsystem tuning, or whole‑body motion.
• Are comfortable being hands‑on with robotic hardware, including commissioning, debugging, testing, and iterating on real robots.
• Have strong fundamentals in classical control, system dynamics, and estimation, with exposure to modern learning‑based or reinforcement learning approaches.
• Can move comfortably across the stack, from low‑level actuator behavior and hardware interfaces to higher‑level algorithms and whole‑robot performance.
• Have experience writing performant production‑quality software in C++ or Rust.
• Experience with robotic hardware and enjoy iterating quickly between simulation and real‑world testing environments.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general‑purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affi...

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation

$380K – $460K + Offers Equity