Senior Motor Control Engineer, Humanoid Actuators
Humanoid robotics company building home robots, Bay Area; says its robot is shipping
| Employer | Humanoid robotics company building home robots, Bay Area; says its robot is shipping (not named) |
|---|---|
| Location | San Carlos, CA (Bay Area) · On-site |
| Type & level | Full-time · Senior |
| Pay | USD 180k–230k + equity Source: pay range stated in the source posting |
| Visa path | O-1A fit (senior candidates) |
| Role family | Humanoid Robotics Engineer |
About the role
The actuators team builds the motors, sensing and drive electronics that let a household humanoid move quietly and safely around people. This role owns how in-house permanent magnet synchronous motors turn current into torque, from simulation through dynamometer testing to the full robot. The goal is smooth, backdrivable, compliant motion inside tight current, voltage and thermal limits.
What you'll do
- Design and tune field-oriented control with cascaded current, velocity and position loops for each in-house motor variant, with documented bandwidth and phase margin targets.
- Build torque and impedance control modes that keep joints compliant on contact, and verify torque accuracy at the joint output.
- Create a motor parameter identification process that runs on the dynamometer and scales to production units.
- Own encoder, Hall and resolver calibration and commutation offset procedures.
- Reduce torque ripple and acoustic noise using cogging, friction and feedforward compensation, measured on the dyno and the robot.
- Define and validate fault reactions, limits and safe torque-off behavior, and build plant models from FEA results correlated with test data.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Controls, Mechatronics, Robotics or a related field.
- 3+ years of industry experience designing and tuning motor control on real hardware.
- Shipped field-oriented control for PMSM or BLDC motors on hardware that reached production, a fielded fleet or a formal validation program.
- Strong command of dq-frame PMSM modelling, space-vector PWM, inverter non-idealities and voltage limits.
- Hands-on motor parameter identification, position sensor calibration and dynamometer testing.
- Controller simulation in MATLAB/Simulink or Python, and ability to read embedded C/C++ to trace control behavior.
Nice to have
- Torque and impedance control for robotic joints, including quasi-direct-drive actuators.
- Field weakening, MTPA and thermal derating of small motors.
- Control-oriented motor models derived from FEA.
- Embedded firmware experience on STM32 or TI C2000, and EtherCAT or CAN FD.
- Functional safety experience (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, IEC 61800-5-2) or an MS/PhD in motor drives or control.
Pay & benefits
USD 180k–230k + equity. The posting lists medical, dental and vision coverage, paid time off and parental leave, and a 401(k) with company match. It also mentions equity, FSA/HSA options, commuter benefits, disability and life insurance, and onsite meals.
Pay source: pay range stated in the source posting. Market data, not an offer from O1DMatch.
Visa path
People in advanced motor control and robotics typically support an O-1A case with evidence such as patents, publications, shipped products with documented impact, expert recommendation letters, and a high salary relative to the field. The posting states no citizenship restriction. An employer like this, or a U.S. agent, can file the petition if the candidate's record meets the standard; approval depends on the individual evidence.
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