--- title: 'Robotics Controls Engineer at Humanoid' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-controls-engineer-humanoid-us-boston-6ag6y5m965sf' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Robotics Controls Engineer at Humanoid - **Company:** [Humanoid](https://feeny.ai/companies/humanoid) - **Location:** US Boston, MA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-08-21 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/humanoid/fd2e5af4-9583-426c-820c-e968b4a06fec ## Job description Here at Humanoid, we believe in a future where robots amplify human potential. That’s why we’ve set out on a mission to build the world’s most capable, commercially-scalable, and safe humanoid robots. We’re bringing that mission to life with HMND‑01 Alpha - our rapidly developed humanoid platform now running in real industrial pilots - and we’re growing the team to take it even further. ## About the Role We are looking for a Controls Engineer to join our Control Team in Boston. You will own how we know our controls stack works: the testing and validation infrastructure that turns "it looked fine on the robot" into measured, reproducible evaluation, the observability and failure analysis that makes runtime behaviour visible and failures shareable, and the documentation and runbooks that let the team self-serve without institutional knowledge. You will also strongly contribute to first-time bring-up of new hardware for Boston components and validate changes end-to-end on real robots before the wider team depends on them. The ideal candidate has strong control fundamentals, solid software engineering discipline across the stack - from control code to test harnesses to diagnostic tooling - and the debugging instincts that only come from real hardware. You will work across the whole control stack and be the person the team relies on to tell them the truth about their code. ## What You'll Do Testing & Validation Infrastructure: - Build and own hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and integration test workflows that quantify controller and motion repeatability and accuracy - turning "it looked fine on the robot" into measured, reproducible evaluation. - Define and implement repeatability and accuracy metrics for controller and motion changes, and the harnesses that make those measurements consistent across runs and across robots. - Expand unit and integration test coverage across the controls components the team actually runs - actuator drivers, hardware interfaces, whole-body control, and the teleoperation pipeline. - Develop automated regression checks that surface controls regressions - in accuracy, repeatability, or behaviour - in simulation and on hardware before they reach the wider team. - Work with controls engineers to define testability requirements for new components and algorithms, so things are built to be evaluated and validated. - Package controllers into cleanly separable, reusable, and easily testable interfaces - so individual controllers can be developed, swapped, and validated in isolation. New Hardware Bring-Up & Integration: - Strongly contribute to first-time bring-up of new hardware for Boston components, and to their integration into the controls stack. - Validate hardware and software changes end-to-end on real robots before broader team use - structured, documented, and repeatable. Debugging, Observability & Failure Analysis: - Instrument the controls stack to improve visibility into runtime behaviour - logging, tracing, and diagnostic tooling. - Reproduce hardware and software failures in structured, developer-shareable formats; feed structured root-cause context back to algorithm and hardware owners. - Identify and resolve cross-stack failure modes that span controls, firmware, and hardware. Documentation & Knowledge Transfer: - Write and maintain engineering documentation for the controls stack: HIL and test coverage, and bring-up/integration guides for new hardware. - Own runbooks that let controls engineers self-serve validation, integration, and recovery without relying on institutional knowledge. ## What We're Looking For - Substantial hands-on robotics experience on real hardware. - Strong control theory foundation (joint-space control, PID and feedforward, impedance/admittance, observers, state estimation, filtering, stability) — enough to define meaningful repeatability and accuracy metrics for a control stack and interpret what they say. - Shipped software across the stack: modern C++ inside a real-time control codebase, plus Python for test harnesses, analysis and tooling. - Built test automation, HIL or integration-test infrastructure for complex physical systems — and got other engineers to actually use it. - Solid measurement and data analysis judgement: sampling, timing and synchronisation, noise, statistical significance, and knowing when a difference between two runs is real. - Strong debugging across software/firmware/hardware boundaries, with the discipline to reproduce failures in a form other engineers can act on. Nice to have: - Physics simulation environments (MuJoCo, Isaac Sim/Isaac Lab) and sim-to-real validation. - Observability tooling: logging and tracing frameworks, metrics collection, time-series databases, dashboarding (e.g. Grafana). - First-time hardware bring-up experience: new actuators, sensors or compute targets integrated into a control stack. - A track record of engineering documentation and runbooks that outlived their author. - Release management or quality gates for safety-relevant software. ## What We Offer - Comprehensive health coverage for US‑based employees, including fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, with virtual care and employee assistance resources. - Meaningful time off to rest and recharge: 23 days of PTO (accrued), separate sick leave, and paid company holidays. - 401(k) retirement plan with 4% employer match. - Competitive equity: stock options with meaningful upside as we scale. - Free daily catered lunch, snacks, and drinks in‑office. - Collaboration with top‑tier engineers, researchers, and product experts in AI and robotics. - Freedom to influence the product and own key initiatives. ## About Humanoid ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Humanoid builds commercially scalable, safe, and reliable humanoid robots designed to automate labor-intensive industrial tasks across warehousing, logistics, manufacturing, and retail. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage) - **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom (HQ) with offices in Cambridge, MA, USA; Burnaby, BC, Canada; and additional presence in Germany, Georgia, and the UAE. - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Artem Sokolov (CEO & Founder) ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Robotics Engineering, Humanoid Robotics, Industrial Automation, Artificial Intelligence - **Target customers**: B2B / Enterprise — industrial sectors including retail, e-commerce, third-party logistics (3PL), manufacturing, and automotive. - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Empowering humanity by building the most reliable, safe, and helpful humanoid robots.” The company aims to free people from repetitive, dangerous, and tedious work, allowing them to engage in more creative and meaningful activities. ## Products & Services - **HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled**: A robust industrial-grade wheeled humanoid robot designed for material handling, pick-and-place, and visual inspection in warehouses and factories. Prioritizes reliability, low total cost of ownership (TCO), and minimal maintenance. - **HMND 01 Alpha Bipedal**: A bipedal humanoid robot for more complex environments requiring advanced locomotion, navigation of confined spaces, and higher dexterity. Features human-level manipulation speeds and walking speeds up to 1.5 m/s. - **KinetIQ**: An AI framework for orchestrating fleets of humanoid robots across both wheeled and bipedal platforms, enabling centralized control and task optimization. - **Modular Garments**: Exchangeable protective “garments” that allow HMND 01 robots to adapt to different use cases and environments, minimizing contamination and collision damage while enabling functional customization. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$50 million** (Seed round closed October 2025, with 1 lead investor). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Strategic partners include leading global companies in AI, cloud computing, and research. Specific partner names are not publicly listed on the website, but the company highlights collaboration with commercial partners to scale deployment. - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew **139.2% YoY** to ~182 employees (as of mid-2026), with 65 active job postings. - Opened offices in London, Boston, and Vancouver within its first year. - Team includes talent recruited from major robotics and AI firms: Sanctuary AI, Boston Dynamics, Dyson, Arrival, Ocado Technology, 1X, Wayve, Apptronik, and Brain Corp. - Focus on initial target sectors representing a combined $12 trillion in annual payroll and 250 million workers. ## Competitive Advantages - **Human-centric design**: The world is already designed for humans, so humanoids can seamlessly integrate into existing environments without costly redesign. - **Modularity**: HMND 01’s hardware/software modularity enables multi-task performance and easy repurposing, reducing the need for specialized robots. - **Reliability & low TCO**: Prioritizing hardware and software stability over raw performance to deliver industrial-grade robustness suitable for mass commercialization. - **KinetIQ fleet orchestration AI**: Proprietary framework for managing mixed fleets of wheeled and bipedal robots, differentiating from competitors focused on single-form-factor robots. - **Experienced leadership**: CEO Artem Sokolov previously scaled a family manufacturing business into a billion-dollar enterprise (EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021). The CTO, Jarad Cannon, has extensive experience translating research into deployment-ready robotics systems. ## Strategic Focus - **Near-term (2027)**: Deploy robots for physical tasks in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and retail — tackling repetitive, dangerous, and tedious manual work. - **Medium-term (2029)**: Expand into the service sector, targeting the 70-80% of the global economy that will be services, with a focus on assisting an aging population (1.4B people over 60). - **Long-term (2031+)**: Enter households as assistants and companions, potentially revolutionizing everyday life across 3.5 billion homes. - **Core strategy**: Partner with leading global companies in AI, cloud, and research for technology development, and with commercial partners for scaled deployment. The company believes the humanoid TAM will reach $38 billion by 2035 and $1 trillion by 2050. ## Why Work Here - **High-growth environment**: Company grew headcount by 139% in a single year, indicating rapid scaling and opportunity for career advancement. 65+ open roles suggest strong hiring momentum. - **Talent from top robotics firms**: Team includes alumni from Boston Dynamics, Sanctuary AI, Dyson, Ocado Technology, Arrival, Wayve, and others — offering a deep learning and collaboration environment. - **Technical focus**: Engineering and technical roles represent 38% of the workforce, with senior-level hires at 23% of the team. The company emphasizes hardware, AI, machine learning, and control systems. - **Mission-driven**: Clear purpose to automate undesirable, unsafe, and repetitive work — appealing to candidates who want to make a tangible societal impact. - **Global presence**: Offices in London (HQ), Cambridge (USA), and Burnaby (Canada), plus operations in 16 countries — offering potential for international mobility and remote collaboration. - **Innovation culture**: Described as a place where engineers and researchers “move from demo to deployment” and “not just in the lab.” The CTO emphasizes building systems that perform in the real world from day one. - **Office/Hybrid policy**: Not explicitly stated, but the company has physical offices in three countries and a distributed team across 16 nations — likely supports hybrid/remote with in-office collaboration for engineering roles. ## Sources 1. [thehumanoid.ai](https://thehumanoid.ai/) 2. [thehumanoid.ai/about-us/](https://thehumanoid.ai/about-us/) 3. [thehumanoid.ai/team/](https://thehumanoid.ai/team/) 4. [thehumanoid.ai/careers/](https://thehumanoid.ai/careers/) 5. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanoidai) 6. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com/humanoid](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/humanoid) ## Other roles at Humanoid - [Senior Embedded Software Engineer - Build & Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-embedded-software-engineer-build-infrastructure-humanoid-us-boston-pmx6rnvttyyv) — US Boston, MA - [Buyer (FTC)](https://feeny.ai/job/buyer-ftc-humanoid-london-380ty1qf7rkz) — London, United Kingdom - [AI Data Collector](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-data-collector-humanoid-london-c2qc1rfsbf4x) — London, United Kingdom - [Head of Investor Relations](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-investor-relations-humanoid-london-d7qzv9arw0wk) — London, United Kingdom - [Global Director of Treasury](https://feeny.ai/job/global-director-of-treasury-humanoid-london-5szpvajax22s) — London, United Kingdom - [Finance Operations Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/finance-operations-analyst-humanoid-london-2rmzqhhyrwxr) — London, United Kingdom - [Senior Group Accountant](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-group-accountant-humanoid-london-cqasb4hw8wxf) — London, United Kingdom - [VP of Sales](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-sales-humanoid-london-4avf2wah5q90) — London, United Kingdom - [VP of Delivery](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-delivery-humanoid-london-jak0zreygwpy) — London, United Kingdom - [Site Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/site-supply-chain-manager-humanoid-london-5hzphgkmrvx0) — London, United Kingdom