Senior Beam Control Engineer: Microradian Precision

Aurelius Systems, Inc; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & equity

Healthcare coverage

PTO + sick days

Field test travel

Meals on site

E-bike stipend

Direct leadership access

Job summary

Aurelius Systems is seeking a Principal Controls Engineer to own the math behind placing a laser on a moving drone. You will own beam control and tracking across the system, fusing radar cues, EO/IR track, and inertial data, with latency-aware estimations and robust stability analyses.

You will derive loops, run them in our in-house simulator, and deploy on hardware within days. Expect microradian precision during outdoor range tests and collaboration with perception, optics, and mechanical

Qualifications

• PhD-level depth in control theory and estimation (robust control, LQG, Kalman variants).
• 10+ years closing loops on precision pointing hardware in the field.
• Microradian LOS work on beam directors or gimbaled sensors.
• Hands-on system identification and plant modeling against real structural dynamics.
• Real-time implementation in C/C++ on embedded/RTOS targets.
• Comfort as technical anchor for controls on a small team.

Responsibilities

• Own beam director control architecture: coarse/gimbal and fine steering loops, bandwidth, multi-rate design.
• Develop target state estimation fusing radar, EO/IR, and inertial data with latency compensation.
• Handle LOS stabilization and jitter rejection through inertial and filtering techniques.
• Maintain pointing error budget and microradian precision during field testing.
• Model the plant via frequency/time-domain ID and validate with hardware-in-the-loop.
• Lead rapid iteration from simulator to hardware with kHz-rate loops.

Skills

Control theory

Estimation

Real-time systems

Embedded programming

System identification

Education

PhD in Control Systems

MS with strong research record

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

C/C++

RTOS

Job description

Aurelius Systems is seeking a Principal Controls Engineer to own the math behind placing a laser on a moving drone. You will own beam control and tracking across the system, fusing radar cues, EO/IR track, and inertial data, with latency-aware estimations and robust stability analyses.

You will derive loops, run them in our in-house simulator, and deploy on hardware within days. Expect microradian precision during outdoor range tests and collaboration with perception, optics, and mechanical