Location: Onsite — Austin, TX Employment Type: Full‑Time Job Title: Lead Robotics Engineer Company Overview 9 Mothers Defense develops AI-enabled systems to counter unmanned aerial threats. Their first product, EDDA, is an autonomous counter-sUAS point-defense platform designed to detect, track, and neutralize Group 1 drone threats. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Position Summary 9 Mothers is seeking a Robotics Lead to own the control systems and motion engineering for their counter-sUAS platform. The Robotics Lead is responsible for the design, implementation, and tuning of the high-bandwidth control loops and state estimation that enable EDDA to track and engage small, fast-moving aerial targets with precision. This is a senior individual contributor position focused on control theory. Essential Duties

Design, implement, and tune the control stack for EDDA's motion system, including actuators and gimbaled subsystems.
Develop and maintain high-bandwidth control loops, including PID, feedforward, and model-predictive control as appropriate to the application.
Develop and maintain state estimation pipelines that fuse inertial measurement unit data, encoder feedback, and perception output into a consistent target track.
Characterize and model mechanical nonlinearities — including backlash, cogging, stiction, inertia, and structural modes — and develop compensation strategies.
Build calibration, logging, and replay tools to support field performance analysis.
Continuously improve slew rate, settling time, and pointing accuracy as the hardware platform evolves.

Requirements

6+ years of professional experience in production controls engineering within motion systems, robotics, aerospace, or comparable real-time domains.
Strong command of modern control theory, including state-space methods, observers, and model-predictive control.
Proficiency in Rust, C, or C++ for real-time code, and Python for analysis and tooling.
Demonstrated track record of bringing a complex physical system to production-grade performance.
U.S. citizenship and ability to pass a background check.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with gimbal, turret, or pointing-system design.
System identification and model-based control experience.
Hands-on experience with motor drivers, CAN bus, and RTOS targets.
Experience with ROS 2 or DDS middleware in production.
Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one.
Prior defense startup experience.
Passion for building robots or engineering projects as a hobby.

Benefits

Meaningful Early Equity: You are a foundational owner; your contributions directly drive the value of your stake in the company.
Direct Roadmap Influence: You have a seat at the table shaping product and technology trajectory from day one.
Mission-Critical Work: Building systems actively needed by the Department of War to counter real-world threats.
The Builder's Playground: Work in a new lab optimized for rapid prototyping with NVIDIA Jetsons...