Aurelius Systems builds AI-powered directed energy laser defense platforms protecting troops, bases, and infrastructure from UAS drone threats. Backed by General Catalyst.
About the role
We need a Principal Controls Engineer who owns the math behind putting a laser on a drone and keeping it there. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.
What they're looking for
- 10+ years closing loops on precision pointing, tracking or stabilization hardware, PhD research included, on systems that had to meet a measured spec in the field
- Microradian-class line-of-sight work: beam directors, fine steering mirrors, gimbaled EO/IR sensors, laser comm pointing-acquisition-tracking terminals, telescope or spacecraft pointing, or precision mechatronics at equivalent precision
- Hands-on system identification and plant modeling against real structural dynamics, and a record of models that predicted what the hardware then did
- Real-time implementation chops. You've shipped loops in C or C++ on embedded or RTOS targets, or worked tightly with the engineers who did, and you know what latency and quantization do to your margins
- Comfort being the technical anchor for controls on a small team, not the manager of a large one
- Not a fit if: Your controls experience is PID tuning from a block library without the theory to say why it works. You're a theorist who has never closed a loop on real hardware, or a manager without recent hands-on work
More about this role
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate: small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
We need a Principal Controls Engineer who owns the math behind putting a laser on a drone and keeping it there.
You'll own beam control and tracking as a theory domain across the whole system: the nested coarse and fine pointing architecture, the estimators that fuse radar cues, EO/IR track and inertial data, the jitter and latency budgets, and the analysis that says what the system can and cannot hit before we...
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