Exoskeleton Controls Engineer

About the role

ABOUT US:

Skip is on a mission to make life joyful through powered movement.

Movement is a powerful way to build physical, mental and social health. Yet it is elusive for 2 billion people due to age, injury, or disability. We are building products that will restore mobility for millions and enable a new frontier of joyful movement experiences. We want to build a future where a grandparent can easily outrun their grandkids and no one is left behind at the trailhead.

Skip is a 28-person early-stage start-up that spun out of Google X in 2023. With deep cross-disciplinary expertise and key partnerships (e.g. with Arc'teryx) we are uniquely positioned to launch the first commercially successful wearable robotic device, the MO/GO, develop a platform to launch future Movewear products and transform millions of lives in the coming years.

We are seeking a highly motivated and adaptable individual who will explore the peaks and valleys of all problems that may come up while building a new generation of wearable robots for everyday life.

THE ROLE:

We are looking for a controls engineer who would primarily be responsible for the design, development, testing and validation of the high-level control system for our powered leg exoskeleton. This means deciding how MO/GO senses what the wearer is doing and how it helps them: estimating gait phase, detecting activity changes, and delivering assistance that feels natural, safe and joyful across walking, stairs, hills and everything in between.

We are a team of 28 phenomenal senior engineers and product leaders, where everyone contributes directly to product development. As such this will start as an individual contributor role, with leadership for critical systems, working closely with our firmware, mechatronics and product teams.

Some of the specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

- Own the high-level exoskeleton control architecture, from sensing and state estimation through assistance torque commands to the low-level motor controller

- Develop and tune gait phase estimation, activity recognition and transition detection (level walking, stairs, slopes, sit-to-stand) using IMU, encoder and torque sensor data

- Design assistance strategies and torque profiles that adapt to different users, speeds and terrain, including human-in-the-loop optimization

- Explore and deploy learning-based control methods where they outperform classical approaches, and get them running reliably on embedded hardware

- Build and maintain simulation and modeling tools (e.g. MuJoCo, OpenSim, MATLAB/Simulink) to speed up controller development and validation

- Define and own safety behaviors, fault handling and edge-case responses so the device fails gracefully on the body

- Plan and run human subject testing and data collection, and turn the data into controller improvements

- Guide design and development decisions for future iterations of the product and future Movewear systems, including sensor selection, actuator requirements and compute needs