UAV Concept Design Engineer | Sizing & Trade Studies

Saab UK; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days annual leave

Pension scheme with employer contrib.

Private medical insurance

Group income protection

Death in service insurance

Job summary

Saab UK, Bedford, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and early-stage concept design within the Blue Bear unit. You will translate requirements into sized, analysable air vehicle concepts and iterate through geometry, weights, propulsion, and mission performance analyses.

You will synthesize flight-test and telemetry data to validate models, run trade studies, and help maintain the design toolchain for rapid iteration across a small multidisciplinary team.

Qualifications

• Aircraft sizing and conceptual-design tooling.
• Synthesis of flight-test data to improve models.
• Experience with OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5, Datcom or similar.
• Strong Python scripting abilities.
• Understanding of the full conceptual design loop and multidisciplinary coupling.
• Experience with PX4 / ArduPilot and SITL/HITL.
• Experience in safety-critical/defence environments.
• Ability to gain SC Clearance.

Responsibilities

• Perform aircraft conceptual sizing and constraint analysis to define feasible design points for new UAV concepts.
• Develop parametric air vehicle geometry and Outer Mould Line and drive it through the analysis loop.
• Produce the core conceptual outputs and synthesize flight-test data for model validation.
• Run trade studies and design-space explorations to map the design space.
• Capture and communicate design risk and feed it into the programme risk register.

Skills

Aircraft sizing

Concept-design tooling

Flight-test data synthesis

Python scripting

Aerosols? no

Tools

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

Datcom

PX4

ArduPilot

Job description

Saab UK, Bedford, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and early-stage concept design within the Blue Bear unit. You will translate requirements into sized, analysable air vehicle concepts and iterate through geometry, weights, propulsion, and mission performance analyses.

You will synthesize flight-test and telemetry data to validate models, run trade studies, and help maintain the design toolchain for rapid iteration across a small multidisciplinary team.