Senior Low-Level Control Engineer

Here at Humanoid, we believe in a future where robots amplify human potential. That’s why we’ve set out on a mission to build the world’s most capable, commercially-scalable, and safe humanoid robots. We’re bringing that mission to life with HMND‑01 - our rapidly developed humanoid platform being deployed in real industrial environments - and we’re growing the team to take it even further.

We are looking for a Senior Control Engineer to join our Controls Team in Vancouver, focusing on SW control development and integration of robotic actuators and sensors.

You will be responsible for designing, implementing, and validating joint- and actuator-level controllers that deliver high precision, responsiveness, and safety for complex robotic mechanisms.

The ideal candidate has a solid background in control theory, strong software engineering skills in C++, and comfort working across the full stack from real‑time embedded control up through networking, kinematics/dynamics, and browser-based debugging tooling. You will work closely with other control and hardware engineers to model, tune, and optimize the behavior of real robots and their subsystems (i.e. limbs and end‑effectors).

• Tune and validate actuator - and joint-space control loops (PID, feed forward, impedance/admittance, observers, state feedback) for multi-DoF systems in ROS
  2.
• Work across EtherCAT/CAN and Linux networking (TCP/IP, DDS discovery, time sync) to ensure deterministic, safe real‑time operation.
• Implement safety and fault‑handling mechanisms for dynamic conditions.

• Build and identify models of actuators, transmissions, and mechanisms — including parallel mechanisms like differential wrists/ankles — for control design and simulation.
• Apply rigid body kinematics/dynamics and numerical IK/FK methods; work from URDF/Xacro and MJCF, interpreting mechanical drawings and geometry.

• Write real‑time-safe, object‑oriented C++ (lock‑free structures, thread safety) for control and diagnostics.
• Design and debug multi-layer control architectures.
• Maintain CMake build/dependency tooling and Python test harnesses; build lightweight browser‑based tools (HTML/JS/Web Socket) for hardware debugging.

• Integrate and calibrate a range of sensors (F/T sensors, tactile sensors, IMUs, etc.) with real‑time acquisition and processing across the control stack.
• Hands‑on hardware bring‑up and debugging.

• Close the loop with mechanical/electronics engineers across sites on actuation requirements;
• Support hardware bring‑up, calibration, and performance testing.

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Control Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or Electrical Engineering with 5+ years in robotic or mechatronic systems — equivalent practical experience counts.
• Shipped real‑time-safe, object‑oriented C++ control software running on real hardware, in production or a serious research programme.
• Tuned and validated controllers on physical actuators, including sensor calibration and bring‑up — with a story about something that behaved nothing like the model and what you did about it.
• Debugged at the fieldbus and OS layer:
  EtherCAT (PDO/SDO, timing constraints) or CAN, on an RTOS or real‑time Linux.
• Strong control theory foundation (linear/nonlinear control, stability, observers, state estimation, feedback/feed forward, filtering, frequency‑domain analysis) applied to multi-DoF mechanisms via Jacobians, numerical IK/FK, and URDF/Xacro.

• BLDC motor control (commutation, current control, torque optimization)
• internals (hardware interfaces, controllers, , plugins,…