Whole-Body Robotics Controls Engineer

Galactic Resource Advancement Mechanism Technologies Corporation; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

GRAM seeks an experienced engineer to build a real-time, whole-body control architecture for insectoid machines in El Segundo. You will coordinate motion and contact forces across multiple DOFs, implementing robust C++ control software and validating it with hardware-in-the-loop tests.

You will develop control-oriented models, perform system identification, and validate actuator characterizations on physical hardware, ensuring stable, responsive performance under varied conditions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, robotics, controls, applied mathematics, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience developing feedback control for a multi-degree-of-freedom robot, vehicle, aerospace platform, or other nonlinear physical system.
• Strong C++ and Python skills and command of rigid-body dynamics, linear systems, optimization, and numerical methods.
• Hands-on experience with a controls or dynamics stack such as Drake, Pinocchio, MuJoCo, ROS 2 control, Eigen, or an equivalent internal framework.
• Deployed a controller on physical hardware and can present measured tracking, stability, latency, or disturbance-rejection results plus a failure that required redesign.

Responsibilities

• Design whole-body controllers that coordinate motion and contact forces across coupled degrees of freedom.
• Implement real-time control software in C++ with explicit timing, numerical stability, saturation, and fault behavior.
• Develop control-oriented dynamics models, system-identification experiments, and actuator characterizations that improve controller fidelity.
• Integrate state estimation, trajectory generation, manipulation, embedded systems, and safety logic into one testable control path.
• Define quantitative envelopes for tracking error, contact stability, disturbance rejection, transition success, compute latency, and recovery.
• Build controller simulations, hardware-in-the-loop tests, and physical-machine tests that reproduce failures and prevent regressions.
• Use test evidence to distinguish controller defects from estimation error, unmodeled dynamics, actuator limits, and mechanical faults.
• Document model validity and confirm simulated results on physical hardware.

Skills

C++

Python

Rigid-body dynamics

Optimization

Numerical methods

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Drake

Pinocchio

MuJoCo

ROS 2 control

Eigen

Job description

GRAM seeks an experienced engineer to build a real-time, whole-body control architecture for insectoid machines in El Segundo. You will coordinate motion and contact forces across multiple DOFs, implementing robust C++ control software and validating it with hardware-in-the-loop tests.

You will develop control-oriented models, perform system identification, and validate actuator characterizations on physical hardware, ensuring stable, responsive performance under varied conditions.