UAV Design Engineer: Conceptual Sizing & Trade Studies

Saab AB; Dunstable; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days annual leave

Workplace pension scheme with 8%

Private medical insurance

Group income protection scheme

Death in service insurance

Up to 5% share matching scheme

Company enhanced Maternity/Adoption &P

+ Much more

Job summary

Saab UK, part of Scandinavia’s defence group, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and early concept design within the Blue Bear unit in Bedford. You will turn requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysable air-vehicle concepts through rapid trade studies and iterative design exploration.

You'll work with a small multidisciplinary team, apply OpenVSP, AVL, XFLR5 and data from flight logs to calibrate models, and assess propulsion concepts within mission performance analyses.

Qualifications

• Aircraft sizing, concept-design tooling, and flight-test data synthesis.
• UAV conceptual design, sizing, weight and mission/energy sizing.
• Hands-on experience with conceptual and preliminary design tools such as OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5, Datcom or equivalent in-house tools.
• Sound applied aerodynamics knowledge.
• Experience synthesising flight logs / telemetry / test data and using it to validate and improve analytical models (model calibration, correlation to test).
• Strong scripting and analysis skills in Python (or similar).
• Working understanding of the full conceptual design loop: geometry, aerodynamics, weights, propulsion, mission performance and stability & control, and how the disciplines couple.
• Strong problem-solving skills, sound engineering judgement, and a proactive approach to improving methods and tools.
• Ability to work collaboratively across a small, multidisciplinary engineering team.
• Stability & control analysis, flight dynamics modelling, and handling-qualities assessment.
• Experience with PX4 / ArduPilot, SITL/HITL simulation, and processing autopilot flight logs (ULog, MAVLink).
• CAD and geometry handling; exporting/meshing surfaces for higher-fidelity aero (panel/CFD).
• Mid-to-high-fidelity aero exposure (panel methods such as FlightStream, or RANS CFD) for validating key design points.
• Experience working in safety-critical, regulated or 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, regenerating a concept from a defined parameter set.
• Produce the core conceptual outputs.
• Run trade studies and design-space exploration.
• Synthesize flight-test and bench-test data (flight logs, telemetry, measured aero/propulsion performance) and use it to validate, calibrate and improve conceptual models and sizing methods.
• Select and shape propulsion system concepts and integrate them into mission and energy-network performance analysis.
• Maintain, improve and where appropriate build the concept-design toolchain and automation that underpins rapid iteration (geometry, aero, mission, surrogate and data-processing tools).
• Capture and communicate design risk, where the design is immature or sensitive and feed it into the programme risk register.

Skills

UAV conceptual design

Aircraft sizing

Trade studies

Python scripting

Aerodynamics knowledge

Data analysis / data validation

SITL/HITL simulation

Autopilot logs (ULog/MAVLink)

Collaboration in multidisciplinary团队

Safety-critical environments

SC Clearance readiness

Tools

OpenVSP

RCAIDE

AVL

XFLR5

Datcom

FlightStream

Job description

Saab UK, part of Scandinavia’s defence group, is seeking a UAV Design Engineer to own aircraft sizing and early concept design within the Blue Bear unit in Bedford. You will turn requirements and CONOPS into sized, analysable air-vehicle concepts through rapid trade studies and iterative design exploration.

You'll work with a small multidisciplinary team, apply OpenVSP, AVL, XFLR5 and data from flight logs to calibrate models, and assess propulsion concepts within mission performance analyses.