Sr. Dynamics and Controls Engineer

Karman Industries

Karman Industries is a Torrance-based thermal technology company building the backbone for giga-scale AI infrastructure. Founded by a team from SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and GE, Karman is moving beyond legacy cooling with the launch of the HPU (Heat Processing Unit)—a new category of thermal architecture designed for the 100kW+ rack era.

The HPU shrinks the exterior mechanical yard by up to 80% while reducing peak energy consumption by 10%+. Unlike traditional systems, the Karman HPU provides zero-water (WUE 0) cooling that ensures high-TDP GPUs and HBM4 memory stay at optimal thermal setpoints without throttling.

Founded in 2024, we’re a fast-growing team of passionate professionals dedicated to making a tangible impact on the future of humanity. We design, build, and test real hardware, and we lead with ownership: you’ll own your work from concept to hardware and help shape how we scale. Our values are Ownership, Performance Excellence, Radical Transparency, and Customer-Centricity.

Join us in our mission to transform the industry and contribute to a more sustainable world.

Senior Dynamics & Controls Engineer

Karman Industries is seeking a highly skilled system dynamics and controls engineer to join our talented engineering team. This is not an industrial automation or PLC/SCADA-based controls role — we are looking for someone who can derive the governing differential equations of a physical system from first principles, analyze that system's dynamic behavior, and design robust control algorithms around it.

Responsibilities:

• Derive equations of motion and governing dynamics for physical systems from first principles

• Analyze system dynamics, including stability, controllability/observability, frequency response, and nonlinear behavior

• Design and validate robust control algorithms

• Build high-fidelity, physics-based models in Simulink/Simscape to validate control designs

• Collaborate with hardware and systems engineers to translate control designs into implementable algorithms

• Document modeling assumptions, derivations, and validation results

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering (M.S. or Ph.D. preferred)

• 5-7 years of experience deriving and analyzing dynamic system equations and designing control algorithms

• Strong first-principles derivation skills — comfortable building models from physics, not just tuning existing controllers

• Proficiency with MATLAB/Simulink and Simscape for physics-based modeling

• Solid grounding in control theory (classical and modern: state-space, frequency domain, stability analysis)

Skills & Attributes:

• Background in GNC, robotics, mechatronics, power electronics/grid dynamics, or another deeply dynamics-driven field

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a first-principles physics-based approach

• Experience with nonlinear, optimal, or adaptive control techniques

• Familiarity with hardware-in-the-loop testing or real-time control implementation

• Excellent communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally

Karman Industries is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Karman Industries is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Direct applicants only — we are not working with outside recruiters or agencies for this role.