You’re a hands-on controls engineer who loves big, complex machines and figuring out how to make them behave that likes being:
- In the lab or on the floor, standing next to a system you helped design
- Wiring sensors and actuators, tuning control loops, and iterating until it “just runs”
- Translating fuzzy requirements (“we want to make that big thing, faster and better”) into concrete architectures, I/O, and logic
- Comfortable in ambiguity, curious by default, and you enjoy taking true ownership over how a system works end-to-end.
What You’ll Do
- Aid in design and implement key control architectures for our large-scale manufacturing systems (controllers/PLCs, HMIs, I/O, communications).
- Develop control logic for motion, force/tension control, heating/curing, and other key operations.
- Select and integrate controllers, drives, sensors, and related hardware so the system is responsive, stable, and debuggable.
- Lead integration and calibration of sensors (temperature, pressure, flow, position, speed, etc.) and ensure signals are clean and usable.
- Build and iterate on test rigs and prototypes; tune and debug control schemes (PID, multi-loop, state machines).
- Commission new equipment: bring-up, I/O checkout, tuning, and optimization under real operating conditions.
- Set up data acquisition and simple tools (scripts, plots, dashboards) to visualize system behavior and support troubleshooting.
- Work closely with chemists, materials scientists, and mechanical engineers to connect machine behavior to material performance and customer needs.
What You Bring
- Familiarity with machine building, electrical, and coding systems including 32, Teensy, Raspberry Pi Pico, Arduino, etc.
- Experience in electrical engineering and electrical safety
- CAD design experience, preferable SolidWorks
- Experience with various sensors for process monitoring; for example: have evaluated multiple mechanisms to measure fluid temperature including thermocouples, thermistors, IR sensors, etc.
- Self starter who can operate with minimal direction and take initiative Naturally curious and eager to learn new tools, materials, and techniques
- Experience in a startup or R&D environment
- Experience with streamlining data acquisition, manipulation, and analytics/visualization
- Experience with large-scale continuous processes
- Experience with composite materials
- A builder’s mindset: you like to own systems, close loops, and leave things working better than you found them.
Top Skills
What We Do
Roadrunner Venture Studios is a company creation factory.
We co-found breakthrough deep-tech ventures with the nation’s most brilliant scientists, engineers, and innovators in Energy, Space, Clean Tech, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Quantum, and High Performance Computing.
Our team gets involved at the earliest possible moment — often when a company is just a whiteboard scribble, a concept modeled in wire-frame, or as founders are puzzling through how to design a pitch deck or process payroll — and rapidly accelerates product development, commercialization, and recruitment.
We are the ultimate company “starter-kit,” equipping our portfolio companies with everything they need to go from the kernel of an idea to a venture-backed growth engine. Our promise is clear: our founders leave our studio with a company, a check, a customer, and a team.
