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Senior Controls Engineer

Watney Robotics· Engineering
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San FranciscoFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Controls Engineers at Watney build the algorithmic foundations that enable autonomous robotic systems, with end-to-end ownership of estimation and controls, deployment to production robots, and collaboration across research, hardware, and deployment teams to improve robustness and performance in unstructured environments.

Responsibilities

  • Own the control stack end-to-end: design, implement, and tune low-level controllers (i.e. PID,H2/H-infinity) and optimal control schemes (i.e. MPC) with high frequency real-time operation.
  • Own fleet controls metrics and guarantee performance: deploy adaptive-control and auto-tuning schemes to the entire fleet to ensure high-tracking accuracy and consistent behavior.
  • Build autonomous navigation capabilities: implement optimization and sampling-based path planning while localizing and mapping the environment using onboard sensors.
  • Close the loop with the field: diagnose real-world failures and translate them into more robust onboard behavior by collaborating with research, hardware, and deployment teams.

Qualifications

  • Hands-on experience implementing and tuning low-level controllers (PID, LQR, etc.) on real-world systems (not just simulation).
  • Formulated and designed optimal and robust control algorithms (robust/stochastic MPC) with an understanding of tradeoffs.
  • Experience with manipulation systems and implementation of inverse kinematics, inverse dynamics (RNEA) and planning algorithms.
  • Experience with real-time, low-latency systems and profiling/optimizing performance-critical code.
  • Experience with real-world sensors and building estimators, filters, and sensor-fusion pipelines.
  • Experience with localization and mapping algorithms (SLAM, UKF) for wheeled or legged robots.
  • Strong mathematical foundation in linear algebra, calculus, and convex optimization.

Skills

Required:PID controlRobotics perceptionSensor fusionReal-time systems
Nice to have:LQRMPCKinematics/Dynamics

Benefits

  • Diversity and inclusion commitment (welcoming people of all backgrounds and identities)
Last updated Sep 19, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Watney Robotics

Watney develops autonomous robotics systems to operate datacenter and supercomputing infrastructure.

Autonomous Physical Infrastructure

autonomous roboticsdatacentersupercomputinginfrastructurehyperscalerscompute scaling
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