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Applied Intuition is seeking a Controls Technical Lead to own the technical direction of the controls stack for autonomous heavy equipment across construction, mining, and agriculture. You will lead development from prototype through production deployment on real vehicles including haul trucks, excavators, wheel loaders, and dozers.
Key responsibilities include: setting technical direction for the full controls stack (low-level actuation through high-level trajectory tracking); designing and implementing controllers at every level; creating safe, redundant control systems in safety-critical environments; characterizing vehicle dynamics across multiple platforms; building scalable calibration and vehicle characterization workflows; leading and mentoring the controls team; evaluating academic research to apply optimal-control techniques like nonlinear MPC and MPPI; and collaborating with customer engineers during field deployments.
You will work on high-performance, safety-critical systems operating under tight timing constraints on real machines in the field. The role requires hands-on technical contribution alongside leadership responsibilities, with emphasis on moving fast while maintaining excellence.
Required qualifications: 6+ years building production software with modern practices, including experience leading engineers or owning a technical area; hands-on experience taking controls solutions from prototype through production deployment on real vehicles; demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and drive technical decisions across multiple workstreams; fluency in differential equations, numerical optimization, numerical analysis, and physics; and enthusiasm for practical solutions to cutting-edge challenges.
Nice-to-have qualifications include MSc/PhD in mechanical engineering, robotics, or computer science with controls coursework/research; experience with safety-critical, high-performance C++; quadratic programming and nonlinear optimization experience; heavy equipment or off-road platform experience; and fleet calibration pipeline or system identification tooling experience.
Applied Intuition is a $15B Series A company founded in 2017, headquartered in Sunnyvale with global offices. The company powers physical AI for autonomous systems across automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining, and agriculture. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers and the US military trust their solutions.
