Real-Time Robotics Controls Engineer (Humanoid & Hands)

Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401k plan

Commute & wellness stipends

Generous vacation and holidays

Annual bonuses

Job summary

Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence’s robotics team seeks a controls specialist who will own the real‑time control stack for arms, hands, and humanoids. You will tune whole‑body controllers, handle state estimation and safety layers, and collaborate with researchers to bridge simulation and hardware.

Strong emphasis on reliability, latency reduction, and hardware integration. The role requires hands‑on experience with hardware on real robots, along with expertise in Python, C++, ROS 2,

Qualifications

• Master’s with 3+ years of experience, or PhD, in robotics, control or a related field.
• Strong grounding in rigid-body dynamics, control theory and system identification.
• Experience with real‑robot manipulation and calibration of arms/hands.
• Proficiency in Python and real‑time C++.
• Experience with floating‑base control and QP/MPC methods on hardware or simulators.

Responsibilities

• Build and own the real‑time control stack for robotic arms, hands and humanoids.
• Stabilize and tune whole‑body controllers for humanoids and bimanual systems.
• Calibrate and tune robots, including sensors, cameras and tactile devices.
• Diagnose stability, latency and contact issues across hardware and software.
• Design hardware interfaces and test rigs from CAD to prototyping.

Skills

Real-time control

Whole-body control

Robot manipulation

Python

C++

Robot learning

System identification

State estimation

Latency and reliability

Debugging across stack

Education

Master’s degree in robotics or related field

PhD in robotics or related field

Tools

ROS 2

Cuda/PyTorch

MuJoCo / Isaac Gym

Job description

Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence’s robotics team seeks a controls specialist who will own the real‑time control stack for arms, hands, and humanoids. You will tune whole‑body controllers, handle state estimation and safety layers, and collaborate with researchers to bridge simulation and hardware.

Strong emphasis on reliability, latency reduction, and hardware integration. The role requires hands‑on experience with hardware on real robots, along with expertise in Python, C++, ROS 2,