Senior Autonomy Controls Engineer – Learning-Based Control

Teleo, a Havoc company, is a robotics company that transforms construction heavy equipment, including loaders, dozers, excavators, and trucks, into autonomous robots for commercial and defense applications. Our technology enables a single operator to supervise and control multiple machines simultaneously, delivering significant productivity gains while improving operator safety and comfort. Teleo was founded by a team of experienced technology leaders who previously led the development of Lyft's Self-Driving Car program and Google Street View. Teleo recently announced its merger with Havoc AI, a fast-growing defense technology company developing coordinated fleets of autonomous maritime vessels. This is a unique opportunity to join a team building technology with real-world impact. You will work on cutting-edge 100,000-pound autonomous robots and engineer complex systems at the intersection of hardware, software, robotics, and AI. About the Role   Own the transition from manually tuned MPC-based vehicle control to learning-driven control policies that adapt across vehicles with minimal human intervention, while maintaining safety and interpretability. Core Responsibilities

Practical understanding of vehicle dynamics and system identification

Practical experience in generating test plans, collecting real-world data, and using real-world data for system identification of plant models for automatic control.

Design and implement learning-based control approaches (imitation learning, reinforcement learning, hybrid MPC + learning)

Reduce dependence on hand-tuned control parameters through data-driven methods

Integrate learned controllers into the existing vehicle control stack safely and incrementally

Define interfaces between classical control (MPC, PID, state estimation) and learning-based components

Work closely with the Principal Controls Engineer to translate classical control insights into learning-friendly formulations

Establish validation criteria for learned control policies before real-vehicle deployment

Required Qualifications

2-3 years of experience with experimental data collection and data analysis to estimate parameters of a plant model used for automatic control

Strong software engineering skills in C, C++, or Python (production-quality code)

Deep understanding of modern robotics control systems

Experience with learning-based control or policy optimization for real-world systems

Comfort working close to hardware and real-time constraints

Preferred Qualification

Reinforcement learning or imitation learning for control

Model-based RL, residual learning, or hybrid MPC architectures

Control under uncertainty and partial observability

Debugging and validating control systems on physical platforms

Bonus Points

Experience deploying learned controllers on vehicles or mobile robots

Familiarity with safety-constrained learning methods

Background spanning both classical and modern control theory