Principal Controls Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA

Department: AI & Machine Learning

Who should join:

• You like working in person with a team in San Francisco.
• You deeply believe that this is the most important mission for humanity and needs to happen yesterday.
• You are highly technical - regardless of the role you are in. We are building technology; you need to understand technology well.
• You care about aesthetics and design inside out. If it's not the best product ever, it bothers you, and you need to “fix” it.
• You don't need someone to motivate you; you get things done.

Why are We Hiring for this Role

• To develop and optimize the control systems that enable precise, smooth, and safe motion in our humanoid robots.
• To bridge the gap between AI-generated action models (e.g., RL policies) and the robot’s physical execution by designing robust motion planning, state estimation, and lower-level control architectures.
• To create full-body controllers that seamlessly integrate inputs from action models with real-time feedback, ensuring high performance in complex environments.
• To ensure our robots can execute tasks reliably, from manipulation to locomotion, while maintaining stability and efficiency.
• To scale our controls stack for deployment across various robot configurations, supporting a wide range of customer applications.

What Kind of Person are We looking for  

• Strong background in control theory, including linear and nonlinear systems, feedback control, stability analysis, and optimal control methods.
• Proficiency in state estimation techniques, such as Kalman filters, particle filters, or sensor fusion for estimating robot pose, velocity, and dynamics from noisy sensor data (e.g., IMUs, encoders, vision).
• Experience with low-level control strategies, including PID controllers, torque control, velocity control, and position control for actuators and joints.
• Skilled in developing full-body controllers that integrate multiple degrees of freedom (DoF), handling kinematics, dynamics, and inverse kinematics.
• Ability to translate high-level action outputs (e.g., from AI or RL models) into low-level commands such as joint angles, torques, velocities, and forces.
• Familiarity with optimization techniques for trajectory planning, model predictive control (MPC), and real-time feedback integration.
• Experience with reinforcement learning (RL) for control policies is a strong plus.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as C++ and Python.
• Experience with robotics middleware (e.g., ROS2) and real-time control systems.
• Strong understanding of numerical methods and computational algorithms for control.
• Ability to analyze complex motion requirements and design control algorithms to meet them.
• Comfortable troubleshooting control issues in a physical robot and iterating quickly to improve performance.
• Comfortable working with hardware-in-the-loop systems and integrating controls with physical robots.
• Collaborates effectively with AI researchers, mechanical engineers, and electrical engineers to ensure seamless system integration.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in controls engineering, motion planning, or a similar field; experience from humanoids is ideal but not required. Transferable skills from drones, autonomous vehicles, or industrial robotics are welcome if they include state estimation and low-level controls.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. A PhD is a plus.
• Experience with real-time operating systems and control frameworks is highly desirable.  

Benefits

We provide market standard benefits (health, vision, dental, 401k, etc.). Join us for the culture and the mission, not for the benefits.

Salary

The annual compensation is expected to be between $180,000 - $280,000. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.

About the Company

Foundation

 About Us

Foundation is developing the future of general purpose robotics with the goal to address the labor shortage.

Our mission is to create advanced robots that can operate in complex environments, reducing human risk in conflict zones and enhancing efficiency in labor-intensive industries.

We are on the lookout for extraordinary engineers and scientists to join our team. Your previous experience in robotics isn't a prerequisite — it's your talent and determination that truly count.

We expect that many of our team members will bring diverse perspectives from various industries and fields. We are looking for individuals with a proven record of exceptional ability and a history of creating things that work.

All positions are based in San Francisco.

Our Culture

We like to be frank and honest about who we are, so that people can decide for themselves if this is a culture they resonate with. Please read more about our culture here https://foundation.bot/culture.