Apptronik
Staff Software Engineer - Humanoid Controls
$300K–$350K
Sunnyvale, CA +2 · Staff · Full-time · Posted Aug 12, 2026
- Location
- Sunnyvale, CA
Austin, TX
Sunnyvale, California, United States - Experience
- 8+ years of relevant industry experience, or 4+ years with a PhD, in robot controls.
- Education
- MS or PhD in Robotics, CS, EE, ME, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
About the job
Leads technical direction and development of humanoid robot controls, translating model-based and learning-based methods into robust capabilities deployed on physical robots.
What you'll do
- Improve controls-stack architecture, algorithms, real-time performance, testing, and maintainability; advance whole-body control across wheeled and biped platforms.
- Develop and deploy control capabilities including learning-based hand control, mobile manipulation, teleoperation, and estimation.
- Set technical direction, mentor engineers, and collaborate across teams to improve robot performance, reliability, and safety.
What they ask for
- Deep robotics fundamentals in kinematics, dynamics, state estimation, and optimization/control theory.
- Expertise in whole-body control (WBC/OSC, QP-based control, or MPC) for floating-base or mobile systems.
- Hands-on experience with learning-based control or reinforcement learning for robotics, including training in simulation.
- Production-grade robot-controller development, real-time C++ and Python, and experience validating or deploying algorithms on physical robot hardware.
Nice to have
- Experience shipping controllers to a production fleet or market at scale; dexterous/in-hand manipulation; or legged locomotion.
- Experience with safety-critical/certified software (ISO 13849, 10218, IEC 61508).
Pay
USD 300,000 - USD 350,000 annual compensation; base salary not specified
Tools
C++, Python, RL, ISO 13849, 10218, IEC 61508
AI focus
Applies learning-based control and reinforcement learning to robotics, including training in simulation and learning-based hand control.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative