Guidance, Navigation & Control Engineer for Autonomous Aircraft

Northrop Grumman; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 79,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Northrop Grumman’s Aeronautics Systems – Research & Advanced Design (R&AD) seeks a Guidance Navigation Controls Engineer to join our team in Rancho Bernardo, CA or Roy, Utah. You will help deploy forward-leaning avionics and control systems for unmanned aircraft and air vehicles.

The role requires a STEM degree and flight dynamics knowledge, plus MATLAB/Simulink experience, and travel up to 20%. US SECRET clearance or higher is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in STEM and 2 years of related engineering experience, or a Master’s degree in a relevant STEM discipline with 0 years of related engineering experience.
• Working knowledge of fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics.
• Familiarity with linear control principles and tools to design feedback control systems.
• Working knowledge of analyzing non-linear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
• Working knowledge of outer and/or inner loop control law performance requirements.
• Experience using MATLAB to create, process, analyze, and visually represent data.
• Experience using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 20% of the time.
• Ability to obtain a US Government Secret security clearance or higher and Special Program Access (SAP).

Responsibilities

• Support research and development of flight control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles.
• Design, develop, implement, verify, and test algorithms, software, and simulation tools to perform guidance, navigation and control (GNC) of autonomous unmanned aircraft.
• Develop control laws to meet air vehicle performance, flying qualities and stability margin requirements, both on ground and in flight.
• Design outer and inner loop control laws, and associated logic and autonomy functions.
• Develop air vehicle system linear and non-linear dynamic simulation models and integrate models into software and hardware-in-the-loop simulation environments.
• Perform performance and flying qualities analysis.
• Support non-linear simulation and hardware-in-the-loop lab testing.
• Support flight test activities and analyze air vehicle flight test data.
• Develop analysis to support design reviews at different stages in a development program, such as PDR, CDR, etc.

Skills

Flight dynamics knowledge

Nonlinear simulation analysis

Control theory basics

C/C++ programming

Python programming

MATLAB

Travel up to 20% willingness

Security clearance

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM

Master's degree in STEM

Tools

MATLAB

Simulink

Lua scripting

Job description

Northrop Grumman’s Aeronautics Systems – Research & Advanced Design (R&AD) seeks a Guidance Navigation Controls Engineer to join our team in Rancho Bernardo, CA or Roy, Utah. You will help deploy forward-leaning avionics and control systems for unmanned aircraft and air vehicles.

The role requires a STEM degree and flight dynamics knowledge, plus MATLAB/Simulink experience, and travel up to 20%. US SECRET clearance or higher is required.