Controls Software Engineer, Robotics

Sanctuary in Vancouver, BC

Your New Role and Team
Sanctuary, a world leader in building AI-based control systems for humanoid robots, is looking to hire a skilled and motivated Controls Software Engineer to join our Integrated Control System team. The Controls Software Engineer is a crucial part of our team, supporting development and improvement of our control software stack. Reporting to the Principal Controls Engineer in Hardware, you’ll contribute to the codebase that links our motion control stack to the real-time and embedded systems.

The best candidates for this role have excellent programming skills, hands-on experience implementing software APIs and hardware interfaces for robotics systems, and knowledge of control of multibody systems.
As Sanctuary’s Controls Software Engineer, you'll be a valued part of the team as you support the continued improvement in our Integrated Control System function, contribute to our core software system architecture and balance the needs of different stakeholders in terms of interaction with the control stack.
Working at Sanctuary AI
Sanctuary AI is an equal opportunity employer; employment with Sanctuary AI is governed based on skills, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any way by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. In 2023, Sanctuary AI moved into a state-of-the-art office facility and has been recognized by LinkedIn as a Top Startup company.
Compensation and Benefits
Sanctuary offers a market-leading compensation package that includes competitive salaries, equity stakes, and a full suite of benefits for permanent employees, encompassing health coverage, paid time off, cutting-edge work facilities, and worksite flexibility by role. Our commitment to fairness ensures that our total compensation consistently surpasses market standards.

About Sanctuary AI
Founded in 2018, Sanctuary builds humanoid robots and a novel control system for them that integrates symbolic logic and reasoning with data-driven robot foundation models. We use our robots to collect vision, audio, touch, and proprioception data from the perspective of the robot while they perform real-world work tasks. We use that data to train multimodal robot foundation models. Because our systems are vertically integrated, we can design, deploy, and refine at scale. Our mission is to create the world's first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots.




Recruiting and Employment Agency Notice:
Recruitment and hiring is conducted internally by Sanctuary AI. We are not seeking or soliciting any new agency partnerships or agreements at this time . Any employment agency or professional recruiter (“Agency”) that provides an unsolicited resume(s) or otherwise presents a prospective job candidate through the Sanctuary AI career site or directly to any Sanctuary AI employee, irrevocably grants to Sanctuary AI the unrestricted right to engage, hire, or contract with that candidate at Sanctuary AI's sole discretion without any compensation to the Agency. We appreciate your interest in working together, and should the need arise our Talent Acquisition team will contact any external firms directly.

    • Write, document, deploy, and maintain software for robot motion control
    • Understand the current control software stack and propose incremental improvements
    • Develop intuitive APIs that balance the needs of different stakeholders
    • Bring hands-on experience of software and hardware debugging of complex robotics systems
    • Gain experience designing control systems that support different input sources (e.g., teleoperation, learned policies, motion planners)
    • Effectively evaluates the impact of different solution methods on system performance, particularly with respect to timing and resource constraints

      • Your Experience
      Qualifications
    • MS or Ph.D. in robotics or a related field (Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, etc.) or equivalent industry experience
    • Demonstrated experience writing software for robot control on hardware

      • Skills
    • Comprehensive software development skills; able to write efficient, scalable, and maintainable code in C++ for robot control
    • Experience with at least one kinematics and dynamics library for robotics (e.g., Pinocchio, Drake, Mujoco, etc.)
    • Experience working on complex software stacks as part of a team
    • Familiarity with documentation and project management tools such as Confluence and Jira is an asset
    • Knowledge of Python and ability to write bindings for C++ code is an asset
    • Knowledge of DDS communication is an asset

      • Traits
    • Above all else, a consistently positive attitude and a willingness to do whatever it takes to create robust solutions to mission objectives
    • Successful candidates will be a proponent of personal responsibility for themselves and their teammates
    • Empathetic listener with conflict resolution capabilities
    • Consistent bias for action, communication, and interpersonal savvy
    • Self-motivated learner that works well with a team
    • Great communicator - able to clearly articulate and balance needs of stakeholders
    • Mission driven and passionate about bringing human-like intelligence to machines
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