Senior Robotics Controls Engineer: Precision Motion

Clera Labs, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera Labs, Inc. in San Francisco, CA, is hiring a senior robotics engineer to own the precision motion control stack for autonomous defense systems.

You will lead design from architecture to field testing, with strong emphasis on state estimation, sensor fusion, and real-time performance. You will implement control algorithms (LQR/MPC), develop simulations, and validate against hardware in diverse environments.

Qualifications

• At least 4 years of robotics experience with closed-loop control on physical motion hardware.
• Strong grounding in classical and state-space control (LQR/MPC) and applying these methods to real systems.
• Hands-on state estimation and sensor fusion using Kalman, EKF, UKF, or complementary filters.
• Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, resonance compensation, latency and jitter in real-time loops.

Responsibilities

• Design and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops from sensor input to actuator command.
• Build state estimation and sensor fusion across IMUs, encoders, and vision feedback.
• Model gimbal, mount, actuator dynamics and compensate nonlinearities.
• Develop simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to validate controls and reduce the sim-to-real gap.
• Characterize system performance on hardware and during field testing, and document control designs and tuning standards.

Skills

Robotics

Control theory (LQR/MPC)

State estimation

Kalman/UKF/EKF

Real-time C++

Python/MATLAB

System identification

Sensor fusion

Hardware-in-the-loop

Simulation

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C++ (Real-time)

Job description

Clera Labs, Inc. in San Francisco, CA, is hiring a senior robotics engineer to own the precision motion control stack for autonomous defense systems.

You will lead design from architecture to field testing, with strong emphasis on state estimation, sensor fusion, and real-time performance. You will implement control algorithms (LQR/MPC), develop simulations, and validate against hardware in diverse environments.