Flight Systems Controls Engineer

SiFly; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

SiFly is developing a new category of vertical-takeoff, long-endurance drones. The role focuses on designing test campaigns, instrumentation, and dashboards to track weight, performance, and reliability.

You will tune PX4 configurations, analyze flight data, and communicate findings to engineers. This hands-on position requires working on bench, shop, flight line, and sometimes customer sites.

Qualifications

• Hands-on flight test or systems test on real aircraft.
• Experience closing the loop from controls to autopilot parameters or code on real equipment.
• Estimation and control fundamentals: coordinate frames, Kalman filtering and sensor fusion.
• Data analysis and scripting - Python or equivalent - for reducing test data into something actionable.
• FAA Part 107 certification if not already certified.

Responsibilities

• Plan and execute test campaigns end to end - objectives, success criteria, test cards, instrumentation, and safety and site coordination.
• Choose the right validation modality for each question: simulation, log replay, hardware-in-the-loop, ground test, or flight.
• Tune and test changes to PX4 - parameters, control and estimation tuning, and configuration - and validate them in the air.
• Analyze flight logs and telemetry to diagnose issues across firmware, hardware, and companion computers.
• Build and maintain test infrastructure: benches, HIL setups, instrumentation, and data pipelines and dashboards behind them.
• Own the progression from bench test, through integrated ground runs, to flight - and the anomaly reports and configuration records that make a campaign reconstructable.
• Generate the flight test evidence used in SiFly's FAA submissions.
• Find, build, and share AI-assisted approaches to this work - log analysis, test data reduction, reporting - and bring the team along with what works.

Skills

Flight test experience

Data analysis

Python scripting

Kalman filtering

Sensor fusion

Autopilot parameter tuning

Hands-on hardware experience

Problem solving

Tools

ROS 2

MAVSDK

Linux

HIL setups

Job description

At SiFly, we're building a new category of aircraft: vertical-takeoff, long-endurance drones that deliver helicopter-level performance at drone economics. After thousands of flight tests and years of engineering, our NDAA-compliant platform flies more than 2 hours in hover or 3 hours in forward flight on a single charge - matching the capability of traditional helicopters at a fraction of their cost and operational burden. We merge aerial robotics, perception, and onboard intelligence to cut complexity and minimize human intervention, and our unique approach to communications and networking unlocks remote operations from day one. It's an ambitious mission, and we're a small team that moves fast.

About the Role

The role We fly a lot - and are building methodical ways of turning data from flights into evolved control system decisions. You’ll design test flight campaigns for the questions we need to answer and develop instrumentation that produces trustworthy data. You’ll drive and develop dashboards that tell us whether weight, performance, and reliability are moving the right way. You'll also be a large part of how we tune and validate changes to PX4 - configuration and code - and how the resulting data gets back to the engineers who need it.

What you'll do

• Plan and execute test campaigns end to end - objectives, success criteria, test cards, instrumentation, and safety and site coordination.
• Choose the right validation modality for each question: simulation, log replay, hardware-in-the-loop, ground test, or flight. Spend flight time on the highest-value learning.
• Tune and test changes to PX4 - parameters, control and estimation tuning, and configuration - and validate them in the air.
• Analyze flight logs and telemetry to diagnose issues across firmware, hardware, and companion computers.
• Build and maintain test infrastructure: benches, HIL setups, instrumentation, and the data pipelines and dashboards behind them.
• Own the progression from bench test, through integrated ground runs, to flight - and the anomaly reports and configuration records that make a campaign reconstructable.
• Generate the flight test evidence used in SiFly's FAA submissions.
• Find, build, and share AI-assisted approaches to this work - log analysis, test data reduction, reporting - and bring the team along with what works.

What we're looking for

• Hands-on flight test or systems test on real aircraft, manned or unmanned. You build test setups, not just operate them.
• You've closed the loop from controls systems or flight data back into autopilot parameters or code, repeatedly, on real equipment.
• Estimation and control fundamentals: coordinate frames, Kalman filtering and sensor fusion, PID analysis.
• Data analysis and scripting - Python or equivalent - for reducing test data into something people act on.
• Comfortable at the aircraft: instrumentation, harnessing, and debugging on the flight line.
• Ability to obtain and use FAA Part 107 certification if not already certified.
• First-principles thinking and a drive to understand the "why" behind traditional approaches to propulsion, power systems, and even radio technologies.
• This is a hands-on job at a company that is still small. You'll be at the bench, in the shop, on the flight line, and sometimes at a customer site working out why a deployed system is misbehaving - alongside new product development.
• You use AI as a real tool, not a talking point. We want to hear one specific example of something you did with AI that surprised you - a workflow you rebuilt, a problem you came at sideways, an analysis that wouldn't have been worth doing by hand. We care less about which tools you use than about what you've changed about how you work. We're enthusiastic about the leverage and unforgiving about errors.

Nice to have

• Existing FAA Part 107 certification and real drone piloting or field-testing experience.
• Flight test instrumentation design - sensors, DAQ, wiring and installation for test.
• ROS 2, MAVSDK, Linux companion computers; safety risk management process for flight testing.

Details

• Onsite in Santa Clara, CA.
• Small team, high ownership, and real hardware in the building.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity.