Senior Vehicle Controls Lead for Autonomous Fleets

applied; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Health benefits

Paid time off

Job summary

Applied Intuition, Inc. seeks a technical lead for controls to own the direction of our controls stack across its full lifecycle—from 0→1 platform bring-up to production fleets.

You will design controllers across the stack and mentor a growing team while delivering safe, high‑performance software for autonomous vehicles in real‑world tasks. You will guide the controls group through architecture decisions, calibrations, and field deployments, applying optimal‑control ideas to real machines and

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building production software with modern software practices.
• Hands-on experience taking controls solutions from prototype to deployment on real, production-grade vehicles.
• Ability to mentor engineers, prioritize a team's roadmap, and drive technical decisions across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Fluency in differential equations, numerical optimization, numerical analysis, and physics.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for the controls stack across both 0→1 platform bring-up and production programs, and see designs through from prototype to deployed fleet.
• Design and implement controllers at every level of the stack, from low-level actuator control to lateral and longitudinal trajectory tracking.
• Design safe, redundant control systems that live within a safety-critical environment.
• Characterize the dynamics of customer vehicles across many embodiments — haul trucks, excavators, wheel loaders, dozers, and more — to create tailored controls solutions and close the gap between simulation and real-world behavior.
• Build calibration and vehicle characterization workflows that scale controls performance from a single prototype to fleets of vehicles without per-vehicle hand-tuning.
• Lead, mentor, and grow the existing controls team; set priorities, unblock engineers, and raise the technical bar through design reviews and hands-on collaboration.
• Evaluate and apply academic research to create optimal-control-based solutions using techniques like nonlinear MPC and MPPI control.
• Collaborate with customers' engineers in construction, mining, and agriculture, and manage those relationships through field deployments.

Skills

Control systems

Leadership

Mentorship

Differential equations

Education

MSc or PhD in mechanical engineering, robotics, or computer science

Tools

C++

Job description

Applied Intuition, Inc. seeks a technical lead for controls to own the direction of our controls stack across its full lifecycle—from 0→1 platform bring-up to production fleets.

You will design controllers across the stack and mentor a growing team while delivering safe, high‑performance software for autonomous vehicles in real‑world tasks. You will guide the controls group through architecture decisions, calibrations, and field deployments, applying optimal‑control ideas to real machines and