Controls Engineer (Autonomous Flight)

Open People Network (OPN); Toronto; On-site; CAD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Osprey Systems is building Canada’s sovereign counter-drone capability. We are a small founding team backed by Canadian defense innovation programs and paid civilian deployments.

You will guide, navigate, and control an autonomous aircraft in cold, GPS-denied environments with onboard sensing and ground cues, owning it from launch dynamics through mission completion. You will design and implement the guidance and control stack, build VIO-based navigation, and own flight-controller integration on

Qualifications

• 4+ years in GNC, robotics controls, or autonomous vehicle control with real hardware in the loop.
• Strong control theory and state estimation.
• Multirotor or fixed-wing flight dynamics experience.
• C++ for real-time control; Python for tooling and analysis.
• Source-level experience with PX4, ArduPilot, or Betaflight.
• Flight-test mindset with disciplined instrumentation and postmortems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the guidance and control stack: trajectory generation, dynamic guidance, and precision flight.
• Build navigation independent of satellite positioning: visual-inertial odometry and ground-sensor cues.
• Own flight-controller integration on open firmware and partition work between flight controller and onboard compute.
• Develop the launch sequence from cold start to mission flight.
• Tune precision timing for mission-critical onboard actions.
• Build the simulation environment and close the sim-to-real gap through flight tests.
• Run outdoor test campaigns and treat every flight as data.
• Help shape engineering culture, tooling, and hiring as the team grows.

Skills

GNC experience

Control theory

State estimation

Flight dynamics

C++ real-time

Python tooling

PX4

ArduPilot

Betaflight

Flight testing

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

Betaflight

Git

Job description

Osprey Systems is building Canada’s sovereign counter-drone capability. Our distributed detection and interception system is designed for the environments where everything else fails: extreme cold, GPS-denied, and network-degraded conditions. We serve critical infrastructure operators and defense customers with a single product line, built in Canada.

We are a small founding team backed by a clear funding pathway through Canadian defense innovation programs and paid civilian deployments.

The role

Guidance, navigation, and control for a small, fast, autonomous aircraft operating without satellite navigation, in wind and cold, guided by onboard sensing and cues from ground systems. You own it from launch dynamics through mission completion.

What you will do

• Design and implement the guidance and control stack: trajectory generation, dynamic guidance, and precision flight in demanding conditions.
• Build navigation independent of satellite positioning: visual-inertial odometry, cued handoff from ground sensors, and dead reckoning.
• Own flight-controller integration on open firmware and partition work between flight controller and onboard compute.
• Develop the launch sequence: cold start from a stored state, rapid stabilization, transition to mission flight.
• Tune precision timing for mission-critical onboard actions.
• Build the simulation environment and close the sim-to-real gap through disciplined flight test.
• Run outdoor test campaigns through an Alberta winter, treating every flight as data.
• Help shape engineering culture, tooling, and hiring as the team grows.

What we are looking for

• 4+ years in GNC, robotics controls, or autonomous vehicle control with real hardware in the loop.
• Strong control theory and state estimation: derive it, implement it, tune it on a real vehicle.
• Multirotor or fixed-wing flight dynamics experience.
• C++ for real-time control; Python for tooling and analysis.
• Source-level experience with PX4, ArduPilot, or Betaflight – not just configuration.
• Flight-test mindset with disciplined instrumentation and postmortems.

Nice to have:

Advanced guidance-law experience; visual-inertial odometry and GPS-denied navigation; high-speed FPV flying; aerodynamics exposure; cold-weather flight operations; early-stage startup experience.

Compensation / logistics:

Outdoor flight testing in Alberta, including winter conditions.