Senior GNC Engineer: Flight Dynamics Leader

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

Benefits offered by this job

Salary + stock options

Healthcare

Collaboration with founders

Technical ownership

Growth opportunities

Job summary

Hop Aero is a venture-backed startup building rockets that deliver cargo anywhere on Earth in minutes. Our mission is to enable resilient global logistics to protect and improve our way of life.

We’re hiring a Lead GNC Engineer to own guidance, navigation, control and flight-dynamics development for Hop Aero’s reusable rocket cargo vehicles. You will build the models, simulations, algorithms, and test infrastructure that move our vehicles from the pad through ascent, coast, re-entry, and

Qualifications

• 5-10 years of relevant experience in GNC, flight dynamics, controls, or closely related fields.
• Deep understanding of rigid-body dynamics, flight mechanics, guidance, controls, and state estimation.
• Demonstrated experience building and using high-fidelity 6-DoF simulations.
• Experience developing control systems for real flight vehicles.
• Strong understanding of actuator dynamics, sensor limitations, latency, uncertainty, and real-world nonlinearities.
• Experience with MATLAB/Simulink and Python and/or C++.
• Ability to translate simulation and analysis into real vehicle requirements and design decisions.
• Experience validating models and algorithms against hardware or flight-test data.
• Ability to work directly with propulsion, avionics, flight software, structures, and test teams.
• Willingness to participate directly in vehicle integration and flight-test operations.
• Must be a US Person under ITAR - Hop Aero will not sponsor visas for this role.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the responsible engineer for guidance, navigation, control, and flight dynamics.
• Build and maintain high-fidelity 6-DoF vehicle simulations from first principles.
• Model vehicle aerodynamics, propulsion, mass properties, sensors, actuators, winds, disturbances, and uncertainties.
• Develop guidance and control algorithms for ascent, coast, attitude reorientation, powered descent, and vertical landing.
• Select and implement appropriate control architectures including PID, LQR, MPC, gain scheduling, or other methods where appropriate.
• Develop navigation and state-estimation systems using inertial, GNSS, vision, radar, altimetry, and other sensing modalities.
• Perform Monte Carlo analysis and define vehicle dispersions, stability margins, and control authority requirements.
• Translate simulation results into requirements for propulsion, TVC, RCS, avionics, structures, and vehicle configuration.
• Integrate GNC algorithms with flight software and embedded systems.
• Develop SIL and HIL environments to validate flight software and vehicle behavior prior to test.
• Support tethered tests, hover tests, hop tests, and full flight-test campaigns.
• Analyze flight data, identify model discrepancies, and continuously improve simulation fidelity.
• Own GNC technical risks through design reviews, test-readiness reviews, and flight-readiness reviews.
• Work in person with the team at our shop in Orange, CA

Skills

GNC engineering

Flight dynamics

Controls design

State estimation

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C++

Job description

Hop Aero is a venture-backed startup building rockets that deliver cargo anywhere on Earth in minutes. Our mission is to enable resilient global logistics to protect and improve our way of life.

We’re hiring a Lead GNC Engineer to own guidance, navigation, control and flight-dynamics development for Hop Aero’s reusable rocket cargo vehicles. You will build the models, simulations, algorithms, and test infrastructure that move our vehicles from the pad through ascent, coast, re-entry, and