# Controls & Systems-Design Consultant

**Company:** [Astera](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/astera)
**Location:** Emeryville, CA
**Role:** Embedded Engineering
**Salary:** $364k – $468k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** control systems design, system identification, kalman filters, observers, closed-loop control, sensors, actuators, fet position sensors, electrostatic actuators, data logging, ml modeling, Robotics, electrical engineering
**Posted:** 2026-07-23

> Shape the control-system architecture and requirements for a Gen-1 DNA-origami electrostatic actuator to ensure observability and controllability from the start. Advise on sensor/actuator design, data logging for system ID/ML, and closed-loop architecture as a fractional consultant.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Define the control-system requirements and constraints for the DNA Origami actuator–sensor system — sensor bandwidth, noise floor, and latency; actuator drive-signal range and dynamics; and end-to-end observability — and feed them into the device-physics and DNA-origami design decisions early.
- Review the field-effect (FET) position-sensor and electrostatic drive-stack designs through a controls lens, flagging choices that would make the system hard to stabilize, identify, or estimate.
- Specify what the early ensemble and single-molecule experiments must log (sampling, excitation, metadata) so the data is usable for later system identification and ML modeling of the device response.
- Sketch the closed-loop control architecture and a simulation/estimation plan (feedback stabilization, averaging, observers) that the incoming full-time Controls engineer will implement.
- Provide a clean, documented handoff to the team.

## Qualifications and Experience
- PhD or MS (or equivalent industry depth) in controls, robotics, electrical engineering, or a related field, with hands-on closed-loop control-system design.
- Track record translating plant and sensor characteristics into design constraints, ideally for noisy, nanoscale, or precision-instrumentation systems.
- Strength in system identification and estimation (Kalman filters / observers) and in specifying data capture for later modeling.
- Comfort advising a physics and wet-lab team fractionally, with occasional on-site collaboration in Emeryville.

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