Software Engineer: Robotics Controls
Generalist
About the role
About Generalist
At Generalist, we are on a mission to build general intelligence for the physical world and make it useful to everyone. We believe the industries and homes of the future will depend on humans and machines working together in new ways. Robots can help us build more and get more done.
We build embodied foundation models, starting with a focus on dexterity. This requires advancing the frontiers of data, models, and hardware, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world.
The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA. Our team of researchers, roboticists, and company builders come from OpenAI, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, and other frontier labs—with a track record of shipping AI breakthroughs. Before Generalist, we pioneered large embodied multimodal models and vision-language-action models (PaLM-E, RT-2, Gemini Robotics), launched and scaled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to hundreds of millions of users, engineered the foundations of autonomous driving, built next-generation robots (Atlas, Spot, Stretch) and pushed the limits of what they can do (from parkour to manipulation, and testing robustness).
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
About the Role
You will own the software that controls our robots. You will collaborate with ML to turn output intentions into smooth, efficient, safe, and responsive actions on a variety of robot embodiments. You will collaborate with hardware and partners to ensure the system, dynamics, and components are behaving optimally.
You’ll be responsible for:
Designing, implementing, and testing the entire real-time control system from the low-level firmware to the input spec for each embodiment we have
Ownership over a wide variety of robot embodiments from stock industrial co-bot arms to custom hardware
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have extensive experience in rigid body kinematics, and robotic controls
Have experience bringing robots into production environments with stringent reliability requirements
Are experienced in high performance, production-ready Python and C++
Experience with kinematics/simulation libraries
Have experience in robotic middleware platforms such as ROS/ROS2/ZCM
Successful candidates have extensive experience (5+ years), often including a PhD
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and test the real-time control system, from low-level firmware to embodiment-specific input specifications.
- Own software across a range of robot embodiments, including industrial collaborative arms and custom hardware.
- Collaborate with machine learning teams to translate model intentions into smooth, efficient, safe, and responsive robot actions.
- Work with hardware teams and partners to optimize system behavior, dynamics, and components.
Qualifications
- Extensive experience with rigid-body kinematics and robotic controls.
- Experience bringing robots into production environments with stringent reliability requirements.
- Experience developing high-performance, production-ready Python and C++ software.
- Experience with kinematics or simulation libraries.
- Experience with robotics middleware such as ROS, ROS 2, or ZCM.
- At least 5 years of relevant experience; a PhD is common among successful candidates.
Benefits
- Equity
Skills mentioned
About Generalist
Generalist is an AI robotics company on a mission to make general-purpose robots a reality. The founding team includes engineers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Boston Dynamics. The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA.