Field Application Engineer — Robotics MCU & Motor Control

Job Title

Field Application Engineer — Robotics MCU & Motor Control

Role Summary

Field Application Engineer on NXP's robotics team supporting humanoids, drones, and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Provide system-level technical support to customers and sales for MCU and motor-control architectures, bring-up, and software/hardware integration.

Work across evaluation, design review, lab validation, and on-site proof-of-concept builds with NXP MCUs and motor-drive reference designs. Role locations include San Jose, CA; greater Boston, MA area; and Austin, TX.

Experience Level

Level - Senior. Requires 10+ years of experience in embedded systems development or applications support for microcontroller-based motor-control or motion-control systems.

Responsibilities

Provide technical leadership and customer-facing engineering support covering motor-control systems from silicon selection through system validation.

• Advise sales and customers on MCU/processor selection, motor-drive architectures, and system integration.
• Design support including schematic and PCB reviews, bench bring-up, debugging, and root-cause analysis for multi-axis and distributed motor-control systems.
• Develop and validate control loops (current, speed, position), encoder interfaces, and real-time communication links to meet deterministic latency and synchronization requirements.
• Perform lab troubleshooting with oscilloscopes, current/voltage probes, power analyzers, and software debug/trace tools.
• Deliver on-site and remote proof-of-concept demos using evaluation kits and motor-control SDKs; tune and validate system performance.
• Lead technical training sessions, webinars, and internal alignment on robotics MCU and motor-control products.
• Collaborate with product teams to feed customer and market requirements into new product definition.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience for successful performance in this role.

• 10+ years in embedded systems development or applications support for microcontroller-based motor/motion-control systems.
• Proficient in C/C++ firmware development and debugging on ARM Cortex-M (Cortex-R/A a plus).
• Hands-on experience with motor-control fundamentals: field-oriented control (FOC), space-vector modulation, sensored/sensorless commutation, and control-loop design focused on robotics.
• Working knowledge of motor-control peripherals: high-resolution PWM timers, high-speed simultaneous-sampling ADCs, sigma-delta modulators, op-amps, comparators, resolvers and quadrature decoders.
• Experience with power-system topics: battery management, 48V architectures, gate drivers, and power-stage integration.
• Familiarity with brushless motor types (BLDC, PMSM) and feedback sensors (Hall, magnetic, optical, inductive, sin/cos, absolute/incremental encoders).
• Experience optimizing PCB design for high-current, high-dv/dt motor-drive layouts and EMC/EMI mitigation.
• Strong troubleshooting skills with schematic review, signal analysis, and lab measurement tools.
• Excellent verbal and written communication; demonstrated leadership and ability to operate autonomously.
• Willingness to travel, primarily within North America.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with real-time motion-control communications (CAN FD/CAN SIC/CAN XL, RS485, EtherCAT, TSN) and motor synchronization.
• Familiarity with functional safety (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) and cybersecurity standards (ISO 21434, IEC 62443) for motor-control systems.
• Knowledge of secure-boot, secure key storage, secure elements, and RTOS platforms (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, NuttX) used in real-time control.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechatronics, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

About the Company

Company: NXP Semiconductors

Headquarters: Nijmegen, Netherlands

NXP Semiconductors N.V. is a global semiconductor company that provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions. With over 45,000 employees and operations in more than 35 countries, NXP is a leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, catering to automotive, industrial IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. The company is committed to innovation and sustainability, advancing a smarter, safer, and more sustainable world through technology.