# Controls Engineer at Gradient Robotics

- Company: Gradient Robotics
- What the company does: Gradient Robotics is building autonomous robots for AI infrastructure buildout. Backed by South Park Commons.
- Company website: https://gradientrobotics.ai
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: San Francisco
- Work setup: On-site
- Posted: 2026-07-22
- Apply by: 2026-10-08
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/gradientrobotics/6253d41d-d453-4cef-bd96-a8878b7a5f36
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/gradient-robotics-controls-engineer/

## About the role

We're looking for a Controls Engineer to own motion from command to actuator. That means modeling and identifying the physical system, understanding exactly why an axis or arm is limited to the performance it has, and designing controllers that deliver sub-millimeter precision under real load. You'll be the person who can look at a Bode plot from the robot and explain what's in it.

## What they're looking for

- 3+ years' experience in controls engineering on physical electromechanical systems with control loops tuned on real hardware
- Strong control theory fundamentals: frequency-domain analysis, stability margins, loop shaping, discrete-time effects, and sound judgment for controller selection (e.g., PID with feedforward)
- Demonstrated system identification skills: measured FRFs, model fitting, and controller design using those models
- Experience with serial robot arms: forward and inverse kinematics (handling singularities, redundancy, joint limits), rigid-body dynamics, friction compensation
- Expertise in debugging nonlinearity and bandwidth-limiting problems and explaining their root causes
- Fluency in Python for analysis and ability to write and review real-time control code in C, C++, or Rust

Tags: Engineering