UAV Concept Engineer: Rapid, Iterative Air Vehicle Design

SAAB; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days annual leave

Workplace pension scheme

Private medical insurance

Death in service insurance

Up to 5% share matching scheme

Enhanced Maternity/Adoption & Paternal

Job summary

Saab UK is seeking a UAV Concept Engineer to join the Concepts team. You will help size and mature next‑generation air vehicle platforms, turning requirements into analysable concepts through rapid trade studies and iterative design loops.

You will synthesize flight-test data, validate models, and contribute to fast, evidence-based design decisions. You will work in a small, multidisciplinary team, collaborating to deliver robust autonomous system concepts and tooling that accelerate development

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in aircraft sizing, concept-design tooling and improving models using flight-test data.
• Experience in UAV conceptual design, constraint analysis and closing a design point.
• Proficiency with OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5, Datcom or equivalent tools.
• Strong aerodynamics understanding and ability to generate/interprete drag polars and lift curves.
• Experience with scripting for automation and data processing (Python or similar).

Responsibilities

• Perform aircraft conceptual sizing and constraint analysis to define design points.
• Develop and morph parametric air vehicle geometry through the analysis loop.
• Produce core conceptual outputs: drag polars, lift curves, weight breakdowns, energy/endurance.
• Run trade studies and design-space exploration for rapid iteration.
• Synthesize flight-test data to validate and improve models.
• Select propulsion concepts and integrate into energy-network analysis.
• Maintain and automate the concept-design toolchain for rapid iteration.
• Capture and communicate design risk for program management.

Skills

aircraft sizing

conceptual design

Python scripting

aerodynamics

flight-test data analysis

team collaboration

design-of-experiments

Tools

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

PX4 / ArduPilot

Job description

Saab UK is seeking a UAV Concept Engineer to join the Concepts team. You will help size and mature next‑generation air vehicle platforms, turning requirements into analysable concepts through rapid trade studies and iterative design loops.

You will synthesize flight-test data, validate models, and contribute to fast, evidence-based design decisions. You will work in a small, multidisciplinary team, collaborating to deliver robust autonomous system concepts and tooling that accelerate development