Senior GNC Engineer: Flight Controls & Guidance

Northrop Grumman; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 114,000 - 213,000; Full time

Job summary

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems – Research & Advanced Design (R&AD) seeks a Principal or Senior Principal GNC Engineer to join the South Bay Vehicle Engineering team in El Segundo, CA or Rancho Bernardo, CA. The role focuses on flight control algorithms for autonomous aircraft and advancing GNC capabilities in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

The candidate will work on design, validation and testing of control laws, simulation tools, and data analysis, supporting development from

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in STEM with required experience or higher.
• Experience with fixed-wing flight dynamics.
• Experience with linear control principles to design feedback control systems.
• Experience analyzing nonlinear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
• Familiarity with autopilot functions and control law performance requirements.
• Proficiency in MATLAB for data processing and visualization.
• Experience using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
• Willingness to travel up to 20%.
• Ability to obtain a US Government Secret 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 tools for GNC of autonomous aircraft.
• Develop control laws to meet performance and stability requirements.
• Design outer and inner loop control laws and autonomy functions.
• Develop simulation models and integrate into software/hardware-in-the-loop environments.
• Perform performance and flying qualities analyses.
• Support flight test activities and analyze test data.
• Contribute to design reviews (PDR/CDR) across development stages.

Skills

Flight dynamics

Autopilot concepts

Control theory understanding

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM with 5+ years

Master’s degree in STEM with 3+ years

PhD in STEM with 1+ year

Tools

MATLAB

Simulink

C/C++

Python

Lua

Job description

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems – Research & Advanced Design (R&AD) seeks a Principal or Senior Principal GNC Engineer to join the South Bay Vehicle Engineering team in El Segundo, CA or Rancho Bernardo, CA. The role focuses on flight control algorithms for autonomous aircraft and advancing GNC capabilities in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

The candidate will work on design, validation and testing of control laws, simulation tools, and data analysis, supporting development from