Lead, Vehicle Controls & Autonomy Systems

Applied Intuition; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401k with match

Learning stipend

Wellness stipend

Paid time off

Job summary

Applied Intuition, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a technical lead for controls to own the technical direction of our controls stack across its full lifecycle—from initial platform bring-up to production fleet scaling.

This role demands hands-on leadership and deep expertise in control theory and software. You will mentor the controls team, set priorities across workstreams, and collaborate with customers across construction, mining, and agriculture to deploy robust, high-performance control

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineers or owning a technical area.
• Hands-on experience taking controls solutions from prototype through deployment.
• Fluency in differential equations, numerical optimization, numerical analysis, and physics.
• Experience writing safety-critical, high-performance software using modern C++.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for the controls stack across 0→1 platform bring-up and production programs, from prototype to deployed fleet.
• Design and implement controllers at all stack levels, from low-level actuation to trajectory tracking.
• Design safe, redundant control systems for safety-critical environments.
• Characterize dynamics of customer vehicles across multiple embodiments to tailor controls solutions.
• Build calibration/vehicle characterization workflows to scale performance across fleets.
• Lead and mentor the controls team, unblock engineers, and drive technical decisions.
• Apply academic research to create optimal-control-based solutions (e.g., nonlinear MPC, MPPI).
• Collaborate with customers' engineers during field deployments.

Skills

Controls systems design

Production software leadership

Mentoring engineers

Differential equations & numerical

C++ expertise

Education

MSc/PhD in mechanical engineering, robotics, or CS

Job description

Applied Intuition, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a technical lead for controls to own the technical direction of our controls stack across its full lifecycle—from initial platform bring-up to production fleet scaling.

This role demands hands-on leadership and deep expertise in control theory and software. You will mentor the controls team, set priorities across workstreams, and collaborate with customers across construction, mining, and agriculture to deploy robust, high-performance control