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 6 November 2026.

Apply on the company's site →

About the role

About the Role

Join a small engineering team developing autonomous directed-energy systems in the defense sector. As a senior individual contributor, you will own the precision motion control stack, helping deliver reliable pointing and tracking performance on real hardware.

What You'll Do

  • Architect and tune precision pointing and tracking control loops, including closed-loop sensor-to-actuator control at hundreds of hertz.
  • Develop state estimation and sensor fusion using IMU, encoder, and vision feedback.
  • Identify and model gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics, then compensate for resonance, friction, backlash, and saturation.
  • Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to develop and validate controls.
  • Characterize system performance on hardware and in field tests, and document controls standards and tuning practices.

What We're Looking For

  • At least 4 years of robotics experience, including hands-on design and tuning of closed-loop controllers on 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, structural resonance compensation, and closing the simulation-to-hardware gap.
  • Modern C++ for real-time control, and Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling and analysis.
  • Direct experience with servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, and IMUs, as well as real-time latency and jitter constraints.
  • Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, and software engineering; gimbal, precision-pointing, tracking, or defense systems experience is relevant.

Compensation & Benefits

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

Location

On-site in San Francisco, California, United States.

What this role asks for

Particular to this role

MATLAB · Simulink

Rare in Clera's other 299 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 358 open in Engineering. 226 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 (180 of 358), TypeScript (177 of 358), React (154 of 358), Python (146 of 358), Machine Learning (74 of 358), Supabase (73 of 358), PostgreSQL (68 of 358)

OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM

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

Posting history

Reposted 2 times since 21 October 2026: a posting for this role in San Francisco was taken down and the role was posted again.

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COMPANYJobs at Clera 361

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