Engineering Manager - Controls

Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond. The Engineering Manager - Controls leads a team of software engineers responsible for the real-time control software that runs on our humanoid robots. This role is accountable for the team's people and delivery: hiring and developing engineers, driving the team's deliverables within the broader Controls roadmap, and making sure the control stack is reliable, well tested, and ready for production. This is a player-leader role.

Responsibilities

Oversee development of the real-time control framework that runs on the robot, including robot drivers, state estimation, control interfaces, and the integration of learned policies and teleoperation; Plan and drive the team's deliverables in coordination with other leads within the broader Controls roadmap, break program goals into deliverable work, track progress against milestones, and raise risks early; Hire, manage, and mentor a team of controls and software engineers, set clear priorities and ownership, give regular feedback, and develop engineers and tech leads; Maintain a high bar for code quality through design reviews, code reviews, and automated testing, including simulation and hardware-in-the-loop regression tests, and own the team's part of the software release process; Keep the control software and tooling fast to work with so engineers can quickly try new approaches in simulation and on hardware; Ensure the control stack behaves consistently in simulation and on hardware, and support robot bring-up, calibration tooling, and root-cause analysis; Partner with the firmware, embedded software, learning, teleoperation, systems, and test teams to align on interfaces, priorities, and schedules, and represent the team in stakeholder reviews

Requirements

Strong foundation in robot kinematics, dynamics, and control, with hands-on experience in areas such as whole-body control, manipulation, or teleoperation; Experience building or leading development of real-time robotic software in C++, including multi-threaded execution, timing, and hardware interfaces; A track record of taking control software from simulation to physical robots and supporting it in testing and deployment; Experience managing or leading engineers, including hiring, mentoring, performance feedback, and setting team priorities; Experience planning and delivering software in a fast-moving R&D environment, balancing near-term deliverables with long-term code health; MS or PhD in Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field; 4+ years of relevant industry experience in robot controls or robotics software (or 2+ years with a PhD), including 1+ year managing engineers and 2+ years as a technical lead; Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer; Must be able to lift 15 pounds at times; Vision to read printed materials and a computer screen; Hearing and speech to communicate

Nice to have

Experience with humanoid, legged, or mobile manipulation platforms; Experience with state estimation and system identification for robotic systems; Experience integrating reinforcement learning or other learned policies into a real-time control stack; Experience with physics engines such as MuJoCo, IsaacSim, or Drake; Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing, continuous integration, and release processes for robotics software; Familiarity with ROS 2 or similar robotics middleware