UAV Concept Design Engineer – Sizing & Trade Studies

Saab UK; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days annual leave

Workplace pension with 8% contribution

Private medical insurance

Group income protection

Death in service insurance

Share matching scheme

Enhanced maternity/adoption & paternit

Job summary

Saab UK, Bedford, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and lead early concept work. You will transform requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysed air vehicle concepts through rapid trade studies, iterating geometry, aerodynamics, weights and propulsion.

You will synthesize flight-test data to improve models and support safety-critical design in a defence context, working within a small multidisciplinary team.

Qualifications

• Aircraft sizing, concept-design tooling, and synthesis of flight-test data to improve models.
• UAV conceptual design and sizing, constraint analysis, weight and mission/energy sizing.
• Hands-on with conceptual/preliminary design tools such as OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5 or in-house tools.
• Sound applied aerodynamics knowledge.
• Experience synthesising flight logs / telemetry / test data to validate and improve analytical models.
• Strong scripting and Python (or similar).

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 core conceptual outputs and run trade studies.
• Synthesize flight-test and bench-test data to validate models and sizing methods.
• Select and shape propulsion concepts and integrate into mission/energy analysis.
• Maintain and improve the concept-design toolchain for rapid iteration.

Skills

Aircraft sizing

UAV conceptual design

Constraint analysis

Python scripting

Flight-log data synthesis

Multidisciplinary collaboration

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

Datcom

PX4 / ArduPilot

SITL/HITL simulation

CAD geometry handling

High-fidelity aero exposure

Safety-critical environments

SC Clearance readiness

Tools

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

FlightStream

RANS CFD

PX4

ArduPilot

Job description

Saab UK, Bedford, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and lead early concept work. You will transform requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysed air vehicle concepts through rapid trade studies, iterating geometry, aerodynamics, weights and propulsion.

You will synthesize flight-test data to improve models and support safety-critical design in a defence context, working within a small multidisciplinary team.