Senior Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer, UAV Platforms

Job Description

Job Description

About the Role
We are seeking a Senior GNC Engineer with 10+ years of experience to serve as a technical anchor for guidance, navigation, and control across our unmanned aircraft (UAV/UAS) programs. This is a hands-on role centered on developing and tuning guidance laws and navigation algorithms for flight vehicles, from concept and simulation through flight test and fielding.

The ideal candidate has spent a significant portion of their career designing, tuning, and validating guidance and navigation for UAV platforms — and is comfortable moving between the whiteboard (deriving a guidance law), the simulation environment (6-DOF Monte Carlo), and the flight line (interpreting test data and re-tuning). You will provide technical leadership, set GNC direction, and mentor a growing team.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and tune guidance laws (e.g., proportional navigation and variants, waypoint and path-following, trajectory shaping, terminal guidance) for fixed-wing, multirotor, and/or hybrid UAV platforms.
• Develop and validate navigation and state-estimation algorithms — GNSS/INS integration, Kalman filtering (EKF/UKF), attitude and heading estimation, and robust performance in GPS-degraded or GPS-denied conditions (e.g., visual-inertial odometry, terrain- or map-relative navigation).
• Design, analyze, and tune flight control laws (inner/outer loop autopilots), and assess stability, robustness, and performance margins across the flight envelope.
• Build and maintain 6-DOF simulation environments; run Monte Carlo campaigns; and support model-, software-, and hardware-in-the-loop (MIL/SIL/HIL) testing.
• Lead and support flight test campaigns : test planning, real-time monitoring, anomaly investigation, and data-driven iterative tuning of guidance, navigation, and control parameters.
• Implement and optimize algorithms for real-time/embedded execution (C/C++), working closely with flight software, avionics, and systems engineering.
• Author requirements, trade studies, analysis reports, and design documentation; present results to internal stakeholders and customers.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior and mid-level GNC engineers.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Electrical, Mechanical, Robotics Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional GNC experience, with significant, demonstrated experience developing and tuning guidance laws and navigation for UAV/UAS platforms.
• Strong theoretical foundation in classical and modern control, estimation theory, flight dynamics, and rigid-body kinematics.
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink for algorithm design, modeling, and (ideally) autocode generation.
• Hands-on experience with sensor fusion / state estimation (EKF/UKF) and GNSS/INS integration .
• Demonstrated experience developing and tuning autopilots/control loops and validating them in both simulation and flight test.
• Proficiency in C/C++ for real-time or embedded implementation (Python a plus).
• Experience building and interpreting 6-DOF simulations and Monte Carlo analyses.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in a relevant discipline.
• Experience with GPS-denied navigation — visual-inertial odometry, SLAM, or terrain-relative techniques.
• Experience with trajectory/path optimization , optimal control, or model predictive control (MPC).
• Autonomy and onboard path-planning experience, particularly in dynamic or degraded environments.
• Familiarity with common autopilot ecosystems (e.g., PX4/ArduPilot) and/or proprietary flight stacks.
• Experience with safety-critical software processes (e.g., DO-178C) and relevant MIL-STD standards.
• Active U.S. security clearance (Secret or Top Secret).
  

Eligibility

Due to U.S. export-control requirements (ITAR/EAR), applicants must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident). Depending on the specific program, the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance may be required, and some roles require an active clearance at start.