Senior Controls Engineer – Rail Autonomy & Simulation

Parallel Systems; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

Parallel Systems is pioneering autonomous battery-electric rail vehicles to transform freight transportation in the U.S. We are seeking a Senior Controls Engineer to design, simulate, and validate real-time control software for our embedded rail systems.

You will build plant models, implement control algorithms, and develop MIL/SIL/HIL environments to verify software before hardware testing, ensuring reliability, safety, and performance in demanding automotive-like applications.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience developing control software for physical systems, with substantial time spent in modeling and simulation.
• Strong understanding of control theory, including PID, state-space, observers, system dynamics, and system identification.
• Proficiency in C/C++, Python, or similar languages used in both simulation and embedded systems development.
• Proficiency with modeling and simulation tools such as MATLAB/Simulink, Isaac Sim or equivalent Python-based frameworks, and with MIL, SIL, and HIL testing workflows.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain plant models of vehicle dynamics, powertrain, and braking systems to analyze, simulate, and tune controllers.
• Design and implement control algorithms for vehicle systems and validate them in simulation before deployment to embedded targets.
• Build and own simulation infrastructure, including MIL, HOOTL, and HITL environments to verify software ahead of vehicle testing.
• Use modeling and simulation to derive sensor and actuator requirements that meet system performance needs.
• Correlate simulation results against test data to validate and improve model fidelity.

Skills

Control theory

C/C++

Python

Simulation

Embedded systems

Modeling & simulation tools

MIL/SIL/HIL testing

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related field

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Isaac Sim

Python-based frameworks

ARM Cortex

RTOS-based systems

Job description

Parallel Systems is pioneering autonomous battery-electric rail vehicles to transform freight transportation in the U.S. We are seeking a Senior Controls Engineer to design, simulate, and validate real-time control software for our embedded rail systems.

You will build plant models, implement control algorithms, and develop MIL/SIL/HIL environments to verify software before hardware testing, ensuring reliability, safety, and performance in demanding automotive-like applications.