Clera

Senior Robotics Engineer, Controls

San Francisco
Salary
$180,000 - $200,000 annually
Level
Senior
Work type
On-site · San Francisco
Visa
Not offered

Open. First seen 29 October 2026.

Apply on the company's site →

About the role

About the Role

Join a small defense technology team building autonomous directed-energy systems. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion controls stack, from system modeling and state estimation through real-time implementation and field validation.

What You'll Do

  • Architect and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops for closed-loop operation at hundreds of hertz.
  • Integrate sensor inputs and actuator commands, using state estimation to fuse IMU, encoder, and vision feedback.
  • Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then tune actuators and compensate for nonlinearities such as backlash, friction, and saturation.
  • Characterize structural resonances and develop filtering and compensation approaches.
  • Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to validate controls and reduce the sim-to-real gap.
  • Conduct field characterization, document control designs, and establish tuning standards.

What We're Looking For

  • At least 4 years of robotics experience, including hands-on design and tuning of closed-loop controllers on physical motion hardware.
  • Strong grounding in classical and state-space controls, including LQR and MPC, plus practical state estimation using Kalman-family or complementary filters.
  • Experience with system identification, frequency-domain tuning, and structural resonance characterization.
  • Modern C++ for real-time control, and Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis.
  • Experience with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, and an understanding of latency and jitter in real-time systems.
  • Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, and validating controls on actual hardware.
  • Experience with gimbals, precision pointing, moving platforms, or target tracking is useful.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $180,000 to $200,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, California, with range days.

What this role asks for

Particular to this role

MATLAB · Simulink

Rare in Clera's other 208 open postings.

Standard for embedded / hardware roles

C++ · Python

Common in embedded / hardware postings at any company.

Compared with Clera's other open jobs.

The team: Engineering HIRES STEADILY

This role is one of 207 open in Engineering. 141 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in March: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.

WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS

LLM (102 of 207), TypeScript (90 of 207), Python (82 of 207), React (77 of 207), Machine Learning (45 of 207), Supabase (37 of 207), JavaScript (36 of 207)

OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM

From the team and dates on Clera's own job board.

Posting history

Reposted once since 21 October 2026: a posting for this role in San Francisco was taken down and the role was posted again.

  • 29 October 2026 – open (this posting)
  • 21 October 2026 – closed 28 October 2026

Similar jobs

More jobs like this

SKILLSPython 46,236C++ 12,219MATLAB 2,734Simulink 706
PLACESSan Francisco 7,773United States 72,480
COMPANYJobs at Clera 209

Is this your posting? Email info@careerholo.com to have it removed.