Sr. Robotics Controls Engineer in San Francisco

Overview:

Polymath Robotics is creating software that can safely control all of the world's industrial vehicles, and we're looking for a Sr. Robotics Controls Engineer to join our team. We’re a close-knit group, each of us experts in our field, working to bring autonomous vehicles to various industries quickly. We believe this moment in robotics and autonomy is as groundbreaking as the PC industry of the 80s, and we need your help.

Polymath was founded by Stefan Seltz-Axmacher and Ilia Baranov. Stefan previously founded Starsky Robotics, one of the first companies to run a fully unmanned truck on a public highway. Ilia previously led robotics teams at Amazon, Clearpath Robotics. We started Polymath because every industrial vehicle company was rebuilding the same autonomy stack from scratch, badly, and we figured we could build it once, properly.

Our vehicles are heavy and unforgiving: haul trucks, wheel loaders, excavators, tractors, and port machinery. Making a 40-ton articulated machine track a path smoothly and handle its implements safely is the core of what we do.

Responsibilities:

• Be a leader on the team, with significant industry experience, to mentor others in controls best practices.
• Design, implement, and tune vehicle controllers across a wide range of industrial platforms: path tracking, speed control, articulated and Ackermann steering, and implement/hydraulic control (booms, buckets, blades).
• Own the vehicle dynamics layer: system identification, actuator characterization, and building control strategies that work across machines with different mass, geometry, and actuation.
• Integrate with drive-by-wire systems over CAN/J1939, working directly with DBW integrators to specify feedback signals, fail-safe behavior, and loss-of-comms handling.
• Contribute to our work in ROS2, filling in the gaps and enhancing our architectural framework where controls meets planning and behavior.
• Design and validate safety-critical behaviors: safe-stop trajectories, protective stop response, and graceful degradation when sensors or actuators misbehave.
• Commission and tune controllers on real vehicles at customer sites, from mines to farms. Expect some travel, and expect to find out whether your PID holds in the field.
• Communicate with prospective clients to align expectations and ensure our control capabilities cover their vehicles and use cases.
• Maintain high ownership of your work, witnessing firsthand the impact of your controllers on customer vehicles performing real tasks.

Your First 90 Days

• First 30: get a vehicle moving. Learn our stack (ROS2, our controls layer, the DBW interfaces), drive our test platforms in sim and in the yard, and read the commissioning logs from past deployments to see where controllers actually break.

• By 60: own the controls work stream for an active customer vehicle. Run system identification, tune path tracking and speed control, and defend your decisions in design reviews.

• By 90: commissioning support for new vehicles. You'll be validating your controller on the real new machine at full payload, and you'll own the punch list that comes out of it.

Qualifications:

Expertise in one or more of the following: classical and modern control (PID, MPC, LQR, pure pursuit), vehicle dynamics and system identification, CAN/J1939 and drive-by-wire integration, C++, Python, ROS/ROS2. 6+ years previous experience working on autonomous robots or vehicles, including time spent tuning controllers on physical machines rather than only in simulation. A passion for high ownership of work and a collaborative spirit, with the ability to contribute anywhere on the stack as needed. In a given week, you can jump from system identification on a wheel loader, to chasing a steering fault on the CAN bus, to organizing with the team to efficiently split work and find common features.

Experience with hydraulics, heavy equipment, or functional safety standards (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4) is a plus.

Why Join Polymath Robotics?

Collaborative Environment: Work alongside fantastic team members on collaborative projects.

Hybrid Workplace: Enjoy the flexibility of a hybrid work model, with engineering based in our SF Mission office three days a week, giving a good balance of maker time and synchronization time.

Open Source Advocacy: We strongly support open-source robotics efforts, allowing your work to be shareable and publishable.

Humor & Passion: We might occasionally be a bunch of rosbags, but our passion and humor drive us to accelerate the realization of autonomous vehicles in the industry.

Application Process:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their resume, a cover letter detailing their experience and interest in the role, and any relevant portfolio or project links.

Polymath Robotics is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We don’t look for a “cultural fit”, we look for people who add to the culture.