2026 Systems and Control Engineering Internship

Department: Engineering

Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Employment Type: FullTime

About Taara

Born at X, Google’s Moonshot Factory, Taara is on a mission to connect billions of people lacking abundant and affordable internet today by pioneering the way we use light to deliver faster, cheaper, more reliable connectivity. We are bringing groundbreaking wireless optical communication and photonics chip technologies to the world to bridge the digital divide.

Joining Taara allows you to do the best work of your life as part of a multidisciplinary team of experts in optics, software, and hardware—all collaborating to solve the hardest connectivity challenges on a global scale. If you want to tackle problems that matter and build tools with real-world impact, we would love to meet you.

About the Role

As a Systems & Control Engineering Intern, you will contribute to the design and implementation of vibration sensing and suppression strategies. This role follows a hands-on R&D cycle: you will first help build the physical infrastructure to simulate disturbances, then use that platform to characterize vibration profiles and develop feedforward control loops to mitigate them.

By developing a custom shaker setup, you will provide the controlled environment necessary to validate high-precision tracking algorithms for our flagship and next-generation FSOC products.

How you will make 10X Impact

• Hardware Testbed Development: Assist in the mechanical and electrical design of a custom shaker setup to simulate real-world disturbance scenarios for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.

• Vibration Characterization: Use IMU sensors within the testbed to capture, process, and analyze complex vibration profiles, transforming raw sensor data into actionable insights for control design.

• Control Strategy Development: Design and implement feedforward control strategies to mitigate high-frequency vibrations based on the characterized disturbance profiles.

• Algorithm Validation: Conduct rigorous testing of your control loops on the shaker configurations to benchmark performance and iterate on suppression logic.

• System Integration: Work closely with the hardware and software teams to integrate your sensing and control solutions into the Taara system architecture.

What you should have

• Currently pursuing a Master’s degree, or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.

• A "builder" mindset—comfortable with both theoretical math and hands-on hardware assembly (mechatronics).

• Strong foundation in Control Theory (Feedforward, State-Space, or Frequency Domain analysis).

• Proficiency in Python or MATLAB for modeling and data analysis.

• Location: Ability to work in the Sunnyvale office at least 3 days per week.

It’d be great if you also had one or more of these

• Mechatronics Experience: Hands-on experience building test rigs, using actuators, or working with shaker tables.

• System Identification: Experience modeling mechanical systems and identifying resonant frequencies through empirical testing.

• Embedded Systems: Experience implementing real-time control loops in C/C++.

• Experience with Signal Processing and sensor fusion (specifically with IMUs or accelerometers).

What we offer

• Competitive salary ($7,000-$11,000/month depending on degree).

• Direct mentorship from industry-leading engineers in a "moonshot" environment.

• Housing assistance may be provided.

• Opportunity to work on technology that has the potential to change how billions of people access the internet.