Robotics Engineer - Planning and Control

Stax is hiring for a breakthrough robotics spin‑out from Imperial College London that is redefining how robots learn.

The company has recently developed a new, extremely efficient imitation learning approach that is creating entirely new opportunities for deployment of intelligent robots. Backed by leading European deep‑tech investors (£4.3m raised), the company is now assembling its founding engineering team as it moves from world‑class research towards real‑world commercial impact. This is a rare opportunity to join a brand‑new robotics startup with major growth expected.

This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role for a highly talented engineer who wants to solve genuinely hard robotics problems, collaborating closely with world‑leading robot learning researchers. You will take full ownership of the robotics stack that interfaces directly with learned models, ensuring that learned policies translate into robust, reliable behaviour on real robot arms.

• Owning the full robotics stack for robot manipulation
• Implementing motion planning, trajectory optimisation, and operational space control
• Deploying and evaluating learned policies on physical robots
• Building robustness, safety, and repeatability into physical execution

• Designing and deploying ROS 2 systems
• Integrating perception, learning, simulation, planning, and control pipelines
• Helping to define the long‑term architecture of a next‑generation robotics platform
• Working closely with our robot learning researchers and machine learning engineers
• Working closely with partners to deploy robots in real‑world industrial environments

• 2+ years of experience working with real robot manipulators (industry or PhD)
• Deep understanding of, and experience in implementing, state‑of‑the‑art robot planning and control algorithms
• Hands‑on experience with ROS 2
• Excited about operating in an early‑stage, fast‑moving startup environment

• Experience with computer vision and vision‑based robot manipulation
• Experience with real‑world imitation learning systems

• Founding team role in a highly ambitious robotics startup developing genuinely novel and state‑of‑the‑art technology
• Backed by top‑tier European deep‑tech venture capital investors with major growth anticipated
• Competitive salary and meaningful equity, with a clear path toward senior or leadership responsibility as the company scales
• An opportunity to experience fast‑paced startup culture in our large North London lab and office space

Interested? If you’re excited to be part of this, we’d love to speak with you.

Please note:

due to the anticipated volume of applications, we may only be able to respond to candidates selected for further consideration.