Autonomous Drone Control & Flight Test Engineer

CDDS AG; Zürich; On-site; CHF 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Direct impact on mission-critical tech

Startup environment with high ownersh

Real-world testing and demonstrations

On-site Zürich location

Job summary

CDDS AG is seeking a Control & Flight Test Engineer to advance the control, vision, hardware, and operational stack of our interceptor drone platform. You will test, tune, and develop state estimation, control, and vision algorithms used in high-speed field demos and customer shoots.

You will collaborate with control, vision, software, and hardware teams to ensure algorithms translate into performance on deployed systems, with ownership of field tests and rigorous validation across the R&D stack.

Qualifications

• PhD or MSc in Robotics, Control Engineering, Electrical Engineering or similar with ETH Zürich or equivalent.
• Strong analytical mindset to derive, evaluate, and validate a complex system.
• Good understanding of classical and optimal control, Kalman filtering, state estimation, and linear algebra (rotations and transformations in SE(3)).
• Proficiency in Python and Linux.
• Comfortable in fast-paced, high-ownership environments with long hours when the mission demands it.
• Openness to travel often.

Responsibilities

• Designing and validate low-latency guidance and control strategies
• Help to push our multi-sensor fusion algorithms for state estimation
• Verify and test new computer vision approaches
• Test and Validate Low-Level Control Software and Hardware Changes
• Raise risks and issues you see on the field to the R&D team
• Analyse data, evaluate performance and failure modes of our full tactical unit while doing intercepts

Skills

Mathematical depth

Python

Linux

Strong analytical mindset

High ownership

Willing to travel

Education

PhD or MSc in Robotics, Control Engineering, Electrical Engineering or similar

Tools

ROS2

PX4

ArduPilot

Gazebo

Isaac Sim

Job description

CDDS AG is seeking a Control & Flight Test Engineer to advance the control, vision, hardware, and operational stack of our interceptor drone platform. You will test, tune, and develop state estimation, control, and vision algorithms used in high-speed field demos and customer shoots.

You will collaborate with control, vision, software, and hardware teams to ensure algorithms translate into performance on deployed systems, with ownership of field tests and rigorous validation across the R&D stack.