{"id":557670,"url":"https://alion.io/job/openai-control-systems-software-engineer-robotics","title":"Control Systems Software Engineer, Robotics","company":{"id":2,"name":"OpenAI","domain":"openai.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/openai","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":79,"open_postings":198,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.854,"repost_share":0.01,"time_to_fill_p50_days":51,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":380000,"max":460000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":460000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-08T22:02:49Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T08:43:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":52,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":52},"description":"About the Team\nOur Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.\nAbout the Role\n We’re looking for a Robotics Control Systems Engineer to take on a foundational role within our robotics team. You’ll help architect, implement, tune, and verify the control infrastructure that enables intelligent, reliable, and responsive robot behavior.\nThis is a deeply hands-on role focused on real-time systems, actuation, dynamics, low-level hardware interaction, and whole-robot performance. You’ll spend significant time working directly with robots onsite: debugging behavior, tuning subsystems, running experiments, and providing feedback across mechanical, electrical, and software teams.\nThis role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 5 days a week.\nIn this role, you will:\nDesign and implement real-time control algorithms for robotic systems, including motion control, feedback loops, state estimation, actuator control, and subsystem tuning.\n\nDefine the control architecture from low-level actuators and hardware interfaces through whole-robot behavior and policy.\n\nIdentify and characterize actuator, hardware, and software parameters through rigorous experimentation, testing, commissioning, and verification.\n\nWork with machine learning engineers to implement reinforcement learning models.\n\nCollaborate across mechanical, electrical, and software teams to integrate control logic with sensing and actuation hardware.\n\nHelp inform the mechanical and electrical design to maximize capability and flexibility.\n\nCreate the control system architecture; determine the correct level of abstraction from actuators all the way up to whole-robot policy.\n\nYou might thrive in this role if you:\nHave a strong robotics background, including manipulators, mobile robots, or other complex physical systems.\n\nHave experience with actuation, control systems, robot dynamics, estimation, subsystem tuning, or whole-body motion.\n\nAre comfortable being hands-on with robotic hardware, including commissioning, debugging, testing, and iterating on real robots.\n\nHave strong fundamentals in classical control, system dynamics, and estimation, with exposure to modern learning-based or reinforcement learning approaches.\n\nCan move comfortably across the stack, from low-level actuator behavior and hardware interfaces to higher-level algorithms and whole-robot performance.\n\nHave experience writing performant production-quality software in C++ or Rust.\n\nExperience with robotic hardware and enjoy iterating quickly between simulation and real-world testing environments.\n\nAbout OpenAI\nOpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.\nWe are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.\nFor additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.\nBackground checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.\nTo notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.\nWe are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.\nOpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy\nAt OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. 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