Senior GNC Engineer - UAV Autonomy & Flight Controls

VennGroup; England; On-site; GBP 55,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

28 days annual leave

Job summary

Venn Group is partnering with a defence technology company to recruit a Senior GNC Engineer. You will own guidance, navigation and control across a varied portfolio, from modelling and embedded implementation to field trials and flight data analysis.

The role covers control-law development, state estimation, autopilot modification, and hands-on testing on multiple platforms. Strong C/C++ skills and experience with PX4/ArduPilot are required.

Qualifications

• Degree in aerospace, electronic, electrical, control or robotics engineering, or a related discipline.
• At least five years' experience in GNC, flight control or state estimation.
• Control design and tuning demonstrated on flying hardware.
• Strong understanding of Kalman filtering and multisensor fusion.
• Experience combining inertial, GNSS, visual or RF-derived data.
• Source-level experience modifying PX4, ArduPilot or a proprietary autopilot.
• Strong embedded C or C++ programming skills.
• MATLAB/Simulink or Python for modelling and analysis.
• SITL/HITL simulation and plant modelling.
• Flight-data analysis, system identification and control-loop diagnosis.
• Experience of degraded or denied-GNSS navigation, or strong knowledge of the underlying estimation techniques.
• Eligibility to obtain UK SC clearance; some programmes may require sole UK nationality.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement and tune control laws and estimators for air and ground platforms.
• Develop solutions from requirements through to flight-proven embedded code.
• Modify and extend PX4, ArduPilot or proprietary autopilot stacks.
• Work on estimators, controllers, mixers, failsafes and hardware drivers.
• Develop navigation capability for GNSS-degraded and GNSS-denied environments.
• Deliver transfer alignment and INS integration between host platforms and deployed systems.
• Build plant models and SITL/HITL simulation environments.
• Conduct system identification using flight-test data.
• Plan and support flight trials, including instrumentation and control-loop tuning.
• Investigate anomalies and analyse flight logs.
• Produce evidence supporting qualification and safety cases.
• Contribute to wider flight-software and systems-engineering activity.

Skills

GNC

Flight control

Kalman filtering

Multisensor fusion

Embedded C/C++

MATLAB/Simulink or Python

SITL/HITL simulation

Flight-data analysis

UK SC clearance eligibility

PX4/ArduPilot modification

Education

Degree in aerospace/electronic/electrical/control/robotics

MSc or PhD in control/estimation/robotics

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

Job description

Venn Group is partnering with a defence technology company to recruit a Senior GNC Engineer. You will own guidance, navigation and control across a varied portfolio, from modelling and embedded implementation to field trials and flight data analysis.

The role covers control-law development, state estimation, autopilot modification, and hands-on testing on multiple platforms. Strong C/C++ skills and experience with PX4/ArduPilot are required.