Senior GNC Engineer

Icarus; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Top market salary and bonuses

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Factory in El Segundo

Daily lunch

Unlimited Celsius

Job summary

Icarus in El Segundo is building solar-powered stratospheric aircraft designed for weeks-long flights. We seek engineers to design, implement, and fly GNC systems, owning the stack end to end from modeling to flight tests, in a fast-paced, hardware-driven environment.

You will work on robust dynamics, sensor fusion, and control design, validating against test data and field flights, with strong emphasis on speed and hands-on execution.

Qualifications

• 2+ years working on real GNC systems for aircraft, UAVs, spacecraft, or similarly complex dynamic systems.
• Strong fundamentals in dynamics, controls, estimation, and linear systems.
• Experience with state estimation (EKF/UKF), sensor fusion, and inertial navigation.
• Experience designing and tuning control systems that fly on real vehicles.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and fly guidance, navigation, and control systems for long-endurance stratospheric aircraft.
• Own the GNC stack end to end: modeling, simulation, control law design, estimation, tuning, validation, and flight test.
• Develop and maintain vehicle dynamics models and simulation environments.
• Design and tune controllers for launch, climb, station-keeping, loiter, descent, and recovery.
• Integrate GNC tightly with avionics, sensors, propulsion, and autonomy software.
• Debug and iterate rapidly using flight data, hardware-in-the-loop, and field testing.
• Support integration, production bring-up, and flight operations in the desert.

Skills

GNC system design

Dynamics and controls

State estimation (EKF/UKF)

Sensor fusion

Inertial navigation

Field testing

Job description

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.

Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

What you'll do

• Design, implement, and fly guidance, navigation, and control systems for long-endurance stratospheric aircraft
• Own the GNC stack end to end: modeling, simulation, control law design, estimation, tuning, validation, and flight test
• Develop and maintain vehicle dynamics models and simulation environments
• Design and tune controllers for launch, climb, station-keeping, loiter, descent, and recovery
• Integrate GNC tightly with avionics, sensors, propulsion, and autonomy software
• Debug and iterate rapidly using flight data, hardware-in-the-loop, and field testing
• Support integration, production bring-up, and flight operations in the desert

What we’re looking for

• 2+ years working on real GNC systems for aircraft, UAVs, spacecraft, or similarly complex dynamic systems
• Strong fundamentals in dynamics, controls, estimation, and linear systems
• Experience with state estimation (EKF/UKF), sensor fusion, and inertial navigation
• Experience designing and tuning control systems that fly on real vehicles
• Comfortable working from first principles and validating with test and flight data
• Ability to move fast, own outcomes, and troubleshoot in the field

Why Icarus

• Meaningful equity
• Top market salary and bonuses
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Factory in El Segundo
• Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
• Small team, massive responsibility
• High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
• Dream desk setup
• Daily lunch
• Unlimited celsius

This is not a normal engineering job

• We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead
• You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster
• We expect full extreme ownership. This is a high-trust, no-BS team, and everyone pulls their weight
• We're hiring across the stack: mechanical, aerodynamics, RF, GNC, electrical, avionics, power electronics, energy storage, software, and systems
• We want builders. No hand-holding. No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. No sitting in meetings all day. Just raw engineering, real hardware, and real flight
• You must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits. We move fast. We go to Mojave at 4 am in the morning. We expect results and an obsession with quality and speed
• You will be a core executor of flight hardware, taking systems from concept to reality and driving rapid iteration loops. You will work across avionics, power electronics, energy storage, integration, and production bring-up. If you want real ownership, real hardware, and real flight milestones, this is it

No tourists. No bystanders. Only builders.