Autonomous Flight Controls Engineer (GNC)

Poseidon Aerospace; California; On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity (early-stage)

Relocation support

Health benefits

6% retirement matching

Flexible PTO

Free meals & snacks

Job summary

Poseidon Aerospace in the San Francisco Bay Area seeks a GNC Engineer to design guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for autonomous cargo aircraft. You will prove them in simulation, work with flight software, and support flight test data to improve models and gains.

You will build and tune flight control laws for all flight phases, develop sensor fusion and state estimation algorithms, and verify implementations in software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests, including travel to

Qualifications

• B.S. in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years designing guidance, navigation, or control algorithms for aircraft, spacecraft, or comparable vehicles.
• Strong grounding in flight dynamics and control theory.
• Experience building or using 6-DOF simulation to design and verify algorithms.
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink or Python, and working knowledge of C++.

Responsibilities

• Design and tune flight control laws for all phases of flight, including takeoff and landing.
• Develop navigation and state estimation algorithms that fuse GNSS, inertial, and air data sensors.
• Develop guidance algorithms for trajectory following and autonomous takeoff and landing.
• Design sensor and actuator fault detection and the control response to failures.
• Build and maintain 6-DOF simulation models of the aircraft, sensors, actuators, and environment.
• Analyze stability, control margins, and performance across the flight envelope, including Monte Carlo analysis.
• Work with flight software to implement algorithms in flight code and verify the implementation against the design.
• Verify algorithms in software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Support flight test planning and execution, including travel to our flight test site.
• Analyze flight data to validate models, identify aircraft dynamics, and refine gains.

Skills

Guidance algorithms

Navigation algorithms

Control algorithms

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C++

Flight dynamics

Education

B.S. in aerospace/ME/EE or related

MS or PhD in controls/dynamics (preferred)

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C++

Job description

Poseidon Aerospace in the San Francisco Bay Area seeks a GNC Engineer to design guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for autonomous cargo aircraft. You will prove them in simulation, work with flight software, and support flight test data to improve models and gains.

You will build and tune flight control laws for all flight phases, develop sensor fusion and state estimation algorithms, and verify implementations in software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests, including travel to