Who We Are

Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.

We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.

Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing.

That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.

In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.

The Role & Your Impact

You'll own the precision motion stack, full stop.

The critical gap we're hiring for is a hands-on robotics controls engineer who can iterate fast on real hardware. Someone who can take a model, get it on the hardware, characterize what's actually happening, and tighten the loop. You think in Bode plots and step responses.

This is a senior IC role on the controls side. You'll own the architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops, the state estimation behind them, and the closed loop integration with the tracker.

What You'll Own

Architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops

Closed loop tracking from sensor input through actuator command at hundreds of Hz

State estimation across IMU, encoder, and vision based feedback (Kalman filters, complementary filters, sensor fusion)

System identification and modeling of the gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics

Actuator tuning, gain scheduling, and compensation for nonlinearities (backlash, friction, saturation)

Resonance characterization, notch filtering, and structural compensation

Simulation infrastructure for controls development

Hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure for controls validation

Field characterization of the system against real targets at the range

Author controls documentation and tuning standards

What We're Looking For

4+ years of experience in robotics

Strong knowledge of fundamentals: classical controls, state space, LQR, MPC

Proven simulation experience and a track record of managing the sim-to-real gap on actual hardware

Modern C++ for real time control implementation

Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, system ID, and analysis

State estimation in practice (Kalman, EKF, UKF, complementary filters)

System identification and frequency domain tuning

Direct experience with motion control hardware — servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, IMUs

Comfortable working at the seam between mechanical, electrical, and software

Understanding of latency, jitter, and how they kill control loop performance

Not a fit if: Your controls experience is purely simulation, your real world tuning amounts to changing PID gains in a UI, or you've never had to characterize a resonance, model an actuator, or fight a sensor that lies to you. We need someone who's tuned hardware that fought back.

Nice-to-Haves

Advanced MPC — nonlinear MPC, robust MPC, or real-time NMPC on resource constrained hardware

Gimbal, beam director, or precision pointing system experience

Aerospace, defense, or directed energy controls background

Adaptive or robust control implementation in production

Vision-in-the-loop control (visual servoing, image-based tracking)

Hardware-in-the-loop simulation experience

High bandwidth sensor pipelines (cameras, radar, IMUs at high rate)

Prior work on a system that had to hit a moving target

Education

MS in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field is the sweet spot. BS with strong hands-on robotics experience or PhD with a real shipping record both welcome.

How You Operate

Extreme bias for action. You'd rather tune on hardware tomorrow than model it for a month

Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own loops before the field does