Controls Engineer: High-Dynamics Flight Control & TVC

Cambridge Aerospace; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Private medical

Dental

Cycle to work scheme

Job summary

Cambridge Aerospace in Cambridge, United Kingdom, is seeking a Controls Engineer to develop and tune inner-loop control laws and effector-level logic, delivering stable, agile, and precise vehicle behaviour across the full flight envelope.

You will design and implement fast flight-control loops for high‑speed guided platforms, work with actuation, structures and aerodynamics teams, and contribute to advanced defence aerospace programs.

Qualifications

• Experience working on high-speed guided systems (missiles, interceptors, high-performance UAVs, etc.).
• Transonic flight experience - deep familiarity with control challenges around shock dynamics and aerodynamic nonlinearities.
• Canard control experience; ability to model and tune multi-surface control systems.
• Strong actuator mixing and tuning experience (rate limiting, control allocation, system-level coupling).

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and tune flight control loops for fast-moving guided platforms
• Develop control architectures suitable for high-G, high-rate, and rapidly changing aerodynamic states
• Perform actuator-level control, including mixing logic and health management
• Support linear and nonlinear stability analysis (eigenstructure, gain/phase margins, robustness evaluation)
• Work closely with actuation, structures, and aerodynamics teams to ensure control authority and bandwidth targets are met

Skills

Flight control

Canard control

TVC experience

Actuator tuning

Guided systems

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Job description

Cambridge Aerospace in Cambridge, United Kingdom, is seeking a Controls Engineer to develop and tune inner-loop control laws and effector-level logic, delivering stable, agile, and precise vehicle behaviour across the full flight envelope.

You will design and implement fast flight-control loops for high‑speed guided platforms, work with actuation, structures and aerodynamics teams, and contribute to advanced defence aerospace programs.