Flight Controls Engineer II - GNC Tuning & Simulation

Pivotal; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Onsite role in Palo Alto

Job summary

Pivotal is leading the development of eVTOL flight control software in Palo Alto. We seek a GNC Engineer II to analyze and tune flight control laws using CONDUIT and our simulation environment, ensuring stable, responsive handling across the flight envelope.

You will collaborate with firmware, aeromechanical, and flight test teams, applying linear control theory and frequency-domain analysis to improve performance and reliability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• 2+ years of industry experience in GNC or flight controls, or a Master’s or PhD with research focused on control systems or flight dynamics.
• Strong foundation in linear control theory, including transfer functions, state-space models, and frequency-domain analysis such as Bode and Nichols plots and stability margins.
• Solid understanding of aircraft flight dynamics, including equations of motion, linearization, and dynamic stability modes.
• Hands-on experience analyzing and tuning feedback control systems, such as cascaded PID loops, on hardware or in high-fidelity simulation.
• Experience using simulation to evaluate control system performance, including Monte Carlo or parametric studies.
• Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink for control design, modeling, and simulation.
• Proficiency in Python or MATLAB for analyzing test and flight data.
• Proficiency in C or C++ for writing application-level code.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and communication skills, and the ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Responsibilities

• Analyze existing control laws against stability and performance criteria such as gain and phase margins, bandwidth, disturbance rejection, and command tracking.
• Tune control law gains and parameters with CONDUIT to meet these criteria across the flight envelope.
• Assess how actuator and sensor dynamics, time delays, and saturation affect control system stability and performance.
• Update control law gains and parameters in MATLAB and Simulink models and support their release into flight software.
• Run Monte Carlo studies in our existing simulation environment that vary aircraft parameters, disturbances, and failures to evaluate control law robustness.
• Help identify worst-case conditions and failure scenarios for simulation-based verification, and run and analyze those cases.
• Set up and improve automated integration tests that simulate complete flight missions and check the results against requirements.
• Support and analyze flight tests, comparing flight data with simulation predictions to assess control performance and refine tuning.
• Document analyses, tuning changes, and test results to support verification activities.

Skills

GNC

Flight controls

Control theory

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C/C++

CONDUIT

Flight dynamics

Monte Carlo

Simulation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering

Tools

CONDUIT

MATLAB

Simulink

Python

C/C++

Job description

Pivotal is leading the development of eVTOL flight control software in Palo Alto. We seek a GNC Engineer II to analyze and tune flight control laws using CONDUIT and our simulation environment, ensuring stable, responsive handling across the flight envelope.

You will collaborate with firmware, aeromechanical, and flight test teams, applying linear control theory and frequency-domain analysis to improve performance and reliability.