Autonomy Flight Controls Engineer (GNC)

Peregrine Industries, Inc.; Covina (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Peregrine Industries is seeking a hands-on Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer to own and mature flight-control systems for fixed-wing and VTOL aircraft. You will tackle stabilization, guidance, navigation, and transition logic, and work with autonomy, embedded software, electrical, and mechanical teams to improve Peregrine systems.

You will analyze flight data, troubleshoot anomalies, and support flight testing in the field, combining state estimation, control theory, and real-time

Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in GNC, flight controls, autonomy, robotics, or a closely related aerospace discipline.
• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• Strong fundamentals in classical and modern control theory, rigid-body dynamics, state estimation, and aircraft flight dynamics.
• Hands‑on experience developing, tuning, or modifying flight‑control systems on real flying hardware.
• Experience with fixed-wing, VTOL, multicopter, or other autonomous aircraft.
• Experience with EKF-based state estimation and multi-sensor fusion.
• Experience with PX4, ArduPilot, or comparable embedded autopilot architectures.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and/or Python.
• Experience with MATLAB, Simulink, or comparable modeling and simulation tools.
• Ability to interpret flight logs and trace problems across sensor, estimator, controller, actuator, and aircraft‑dynamics layers.
• Comfort working directly with aircraft hardware and participating in field flight-test operations.

Responsibilities

• Own and develop GNC capabilities for Peregrine fixed-wing and VTOL aircraft, including stabilization, guidance, navigation, flight control, and transition logic.
• Design, implement, tune, and flight-validate attitude, rate, position, velocity, and trajectory-control algorithms.
• Develop and tune state-estimation and sensor-fusion systems using IMU, GNSS, barometer, magnetometer, air-data, and other navigation inputs.
• Develop guidance and navigation capabilities for autonomous mission execution, waypoint navigation, terminal behaviors, and degraded or GNSS-denied environments.
• Work with autonomy and software engineers to integrate mission logic, perception, navigation, and vehicle-control functions.
• Integrate and troubleshoot flight-critical subsystems including autopilots, sensors, servos, ESCs, propulsion systems, datalinks, telemetry, and ground-control stations.
• Build and maintain flight-dynamics and 6DOF simulation models for control development, tuning, and validation before flight.
• Analyze flight logs and telemetry to identify instability, estimator errors, sensor faults, actuator issues, aerodynamic effects, and software defects.
• Support structured ground and flight testing, including test planning, instrumentation, parameter tuning, data collection, and post-flight analysis.
• Use flight-test results to improve aircraft stability, navigation accuracy, maneuverability, reliability, and mission performance.
• Develop internal tools and scripts for simulation, flight-data analysis, tuning, and system debugging.
• Work directly with aircraft in the shop and field and support customer demonstrations and operational test events as required.

Skills

GNC

Flight controls

Autonomy

Robotics

State estimation

Control theory

C/C++

Python

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering or related field

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

MATLAB

Simulink

Embedded autopilot architectures

Job description

Peregrine Industries is seeking a hands-on Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer to own and mature flight-control systems for fixed-wing and VTOL aircraft. You will tackle stabilization, guidance, navigation, and transition logic, and work with autonomy, embedded software, electrical, and mechanical teams to improve Peregrine systems.

You will analyze flight data, troubleshoot anomalies, and support flight testing in the field, combining state estimation, control theory, and real-time