UAV Concept Engineer — Rapid Sizing & Trade Studies

SAAB; East Woodhay; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Saab UK is seeking a UAV Concept Engineer to strengthen our early-stage design capability: turning requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysed and testable air vehicle concepts through rapid, iterative trade studies.

You will explore design spaces across geometry, aerodynamics, weights and propulsion, synthesize flight-test and bench data to validate models, and contribute to a fast-paced, collaborative multidisciplinary team.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in aircraft/UAV conceptual design and sizing.
• Hands-on experience with flight-test data to calibrate models.
• Proficiency with OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5, Datcom or in-house tools.
• Strong Python scripting for automation and data processing.
• Understanding of the full conceptual design loop: geometry, aerodynamics, weights, propulsion, mission performance.
• Ability to communicate assumptions and uncertainty clearly.

Responsibilities

• Perform conceptual sizing and constraint analysis to define design points for new UAV concepts.
• Develop and morph parametric air vehicle geometry and Outer Mould Line and drive it through the analysis loop.
• Produce outputs: drag polars, lift curves, weight breakdowns, mission energy/endurance, static margin, trim and control authority.
• Run trade studies and design-space exploration for fast iteration across many designs.
• Synthesize flight-test and bench-test data to validate and improve conceptual models and sizing methods.
• Select and shape propulsion concepts and integrate them into mission and energy-network analyses.
• Maintain and improve the concept-design toolchain and automation.
• Capture design risk and feed it into the programme risk register.

Skills

Aircraft sizing

Concept-design tooling

Flight-test data synthesis

Python scripting

Design-of-experiments

Systems integration

UAV conceptual design

Tools

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

Datcom

PX4 / ArduPilot

SITL/HITL simulation

Job description

Saab UK is seeking a UAV Concept Engineer to strengthen our early-stage design capability: turning requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysed and testable air vehicle concepts through rapid, iterative trade studies.

You will explore design spaces across geometry, aerodynamics, weights and propulsion, synthesize flight-test and bench data to validate models, and contribute to a fast-paced, collaborative multidisciplinary team.