Flight Systems Engineer: Hands-On Tests & AI Diagnostics

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

Job summary

SiFly Aviation in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a hands-on Flight Systems Engineer to design and run test campaigns, develop instrumentation, and build data-driven dashboards for verdicts on weight, performance, and reliability.

You will tune PX4 configurations, analyze flight logs, and contribute to robust flight-test infrastructure and FAA submissions. This role blends bench work, shop time, flight line activity, and customer-site problem solving.

Qualifications

• Hands-on flight test or systems test on real aircraft.
• Closed loop from controls systems or flight data back into autopilot parameters on real equipment.
• Data analysis and scripting — Python or equivalent.
• Comfortable with instrumentation and debugging on the flight line.
• Ability to obtain 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 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.

Skills

Flight test

Data analysis

Python

Kalman filtering

Sensor fusion

Education

FAA Part 107 certification

Tools

ROS 2

MAVSDK

Linux

Job description

SiFly Aviation in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a hands-on Flight Systems Engineer to design and run test campaigns, develop instrumentation, and build data-driven dashboards for verdicts on weight, performance, and reliability.

You will tune PX4 configurations, analyze flight logs, and contribute to robust flight-test infrastructure and FAA submissions. This role blends bench work, shop time, flight line activity, and customer-site problem solving.