Legged Robotics - Real-Time Whole-Body Control & MPC Engineer

NEURA Robotics; Germany (OH); On-site; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

NEURA Robotics is seeking a senior robotics engineer to advance legged locomotion through trajectory optimization, MPC, and whole-body control on real hardware. You will work with state estimation, simulation, and hardware teams to ensure robust, real-time performance on floating-base platforms.

The role requires hands-on experience with MPC, WBC, and QP-based control at high frequencies, plus strong C++ and Python skills.

Qualifications

• MSc or PhD in robotics, controls, mechanical or electrical engineering, computer science, or related field.
• 4+ years hands-on experience developing trajectory optimization, MPC for locomotion, and/or whole-body control on physical robots.
• Strong foundation in floating-base articulated rigid-body dynamics and contact modelling.
• Strong knowledge of reduced-order locomotion models (LIPM, SRBD, centroidal dynamics) and their use inside MPC.
• Strong foundation in optimal control, constrained numerical optimization, and model-predictive control for legged robots.
• Hands-on experience with whole-body QP / TSID frameworks on real robot data with QP / DDP solver internals.
• Experience deploying real-time control/MPC/WBC pipelines at 500 Hz – 1 kHz on hardware.
• Strong C++ for real-time robotics software; Python for analysis and tooling.

Responsibilities

• Whole-body motion generation and control for floating-base legged platforms, including locomotion, balance, and contact transitions.
• Trajectory optimization and MPC pipelines over state, contacts, ground reaction forces, and centroidal momentum.
• QP-based task-space inverse dynamics to execute MPC/trajectory-optimization references at high frequency.
• Whole-body modelling from URDF/MJCF, including FK/IK, Jacobians, and dynamics calculations.
• Define and manage constraints across MPC and QP layers with task hierarchy for the platform.
• Improve solver performance, warm-starting, conditioning, and reliability at high update rates.
• Deploy, tune, and debug MPC, trajectory optimization, IK, and inverse dynamics on physical robots.
• Calibrate contact models and validate against real robot data; emphasize robust, predictable locomotion.

Skills

Trajectory optimization

MPC for locomotion

Whole-body control

Floating-base dynamics

Contact modelling

Real-time robotics software

C++ for robotics

Python tooling

Education

MSc/PhD in robotics, controls, or related field

Tools

Pinocchio

MuJoCo

Crocoddyl

IPOPT

TSID

OCS2

Job description

NEURA Robotics is seeking a senior robotics engineer to advance legged locomotion through trajectory optimization, MPC, and whole-body control on real hardware. You will work with state estimation, simulation, and hardware teams to ensure robust, real-time performance on floating-base platforms.

The role requires hands-on experience with MPC, WBC, and QP-based control at high frequencies, plus strong C++ and Python skills.