Senior Robotics Controls Engineer — pHRI

About Us

Symbiokinetics builds robotic systems that learn skilled physical interaction from human experts. Our robots operate in direct contact with people in high-stakes environments. They need to feel intuitive, predictable, and be completely safe.

About the Role

You will design, implement, and validate control algorithms for torque-controlled manipulators used in direct physical contact with people. This is a hands-on role: you will work with real hardware daily, own problems from first-principles analysis through deployment, and be responsible for both the theoretical soundness and the practical performance of what you ship.

What You'll Do

* Develop and maintain real-time controllers for contact-rich manipulation and shared autonomy tasks

* Design and run system identification procedures

* Implement and tune friction compensation, gravity compensation, and inertia shaping algorithms

* Instrument, run, and analyze hardware experiments to validate controller performance against quantitative criteria

* Read and evaluate robotics research literature to identify methods worth implementing

* Port and adapt controllers across robot platforms and software stacks

* Support design team in developing new robot and end-effector designs for co-manipulation

Required

* MS or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Controls, or related field

* 5+ years developing and deploying control algorithms on physical torque-controlled robots (not simulation-only)

* Deep understanding of rigid-body dynamics, operational-space control, and impedance/admittance frameworks

* Experience with online parameter estimation or adaptive control on physical hardware (payload identification, recursive inertia/friction updates, or equivalent)

* Strong C/C++ for real-time systems

* Experience with ROS2 as a communication and tooling layer

* Track record of closing the gap between a method in a paper and a controller running on hardware

Nice to Have

* Passivity-based control design (energy tanks, port-Hamiltonian methods, Lyapunov stability)

* System identification: excitation trajectory design, offline batch identification with physical-consistency constraints, recursive estimation (RLS, EKF, disturbance observers)

* Adaptive control: variable impedance/admittance laws, iterative learning control, or other schemes that update controller behavior online

* Experience designing actuated mechanical systems

* Visuotactile, tactile array, or F/T sensor integration, calibration, and compensation

* Bayesian optimization or other black-box methods for controller parameter tuning

* Experience with the Franka FR3 or similar platform

* Familiarity with medical or rehabilitation robotics and relevant safety standards

Benefits

* Competitive salary and equity

* Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k)

* Work directly with hardware on problems that matter