Founding Robotics Controls Engineer for Space Autonomy

Generalastro; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

General Astronautics is seeking a Founding Robotics Engineer to own the software, controls, and autonomy stack for dexterous manipulation in microgravity. You will shape motion planning, perception, and integration with hardware, from initial development to flight demonstrations.

This high-ownership role requires taking full responsibility for algorithms running on real spacecraft hardware, with opportunities to explore learning-based approaches to autonomous manipulation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical, Electrical, Aerospace or related field.
• Strong understanding of robotics kinematics, dynamics, motion planning and control theory.
• Proficiency in C++ and/or Python for robotics software development.
• Experience deploying software on physical robotic systems.
• Strong debugging, problem-solving and systems integration skills.
• Demonstrated ability to own complex technical problems from concept to working implementation.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of the robotics software and autonomy stack for dexterous manipulation in microgravity.
• Develop motion planning, trajectory generation, inverse kinematics, and feedback control for manipulators.
• Integrate perception, sensing and state estimation for autonomous interaction with spacecraft hardware.
• Develop, train, evaluate and deploy learning-based robotic policies for autonomous manipulation tasks.
• Define performance metrics, test procedures and verification plans for autonomous robotic operations.

Skills

Robotics

C++/Python

Kinematics & Dynamics

ROS 2

Perception/Vision

Systems Integration

Autonomy/ML in robotics

Education

Bachelor's degree in Robotics or related

Tools

Isaac Sim

MuJoCo

NVIDIA Jetson

Embedded GPU platforms

Job description

General Astronautics is seeking a Founding Robotics Engineer to own the software, controls, and autonomy stack for dexterous manipulation in microgravity. You will shape motion planning, perception, and integration with hardware, from initial development to flight demonstrations.

This high-ownership role requires taking full responsibility for algorithms running on real spacecraft hardware, with opportunities to explore learning-based approaches to autonomous manipulation.