Watney
Senior Controls Engineer
San Francisco · On-site · Senior · Full-time · Posted Jun 30, 2026
About the job
Own and deploy the estimation, control, and navigation systems that enable Watney’s robots to operate reliably in real-world environments.
What you'll do
- Design, implement, tune, and deploy low-level and optimal controllers across the robot fleet.
- Define fleet control metrics and implement adaptive-control and auto-tuning schemes.
- Build autonomous navigation capabilities and work with research, hardware, and deployment teams to address field failures.
What they ask for
- Hands-on experience implementing and tuning low-level controllers on real-world systems.
- Experience formulating optimal and robust control algorithms and understanding their tradeoffs.
- Experience with real-time, low-latency systems and performance-critical code.
- Strong mathematical foundation in linear algebra, calculus, and convex optimization.
Nice to have
- Experience with manipulation systems, including inverse kinematics, inverse dynamics (RNEA), and planning algorithms.
- Experience with real-world sensors, estimation and sensor fusion, or localization and mapping (SLAM, UKF).
Tools
PID, H2/H-infinity, MPC, LQR, RNEA, SLAM, UKF
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative