Senior GNC Engineer - Precision Drone Guidance & Control

Neros; Torrance (CA); On-site; USD 164,000 - 229,000; Full time

Job summary

Neros is a defense technology company rebuilding America’s drone industrial base. We design and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are tested in combat, iterated at startup speed, and built at massive scale.

As drones transform warfare, Neros delivers systems the West needs to deter adversaries. We’re hiring engineers who move fast, take ownership, and get capability into warfighters’ hands in months, not years.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience developing guidance, navigation, and control software for missiles, interceptors, guided munitions, unmanned aircraft, or comparable autonomous vehicles, with demonstrated ownership of a guidance or control function through flight
• Expert-level knowledge of terminal homing guidance, including proportional and augmented proportional navigation, zero-effort-miss formulations, time-to-go estimation, lead-pursuit geometry, and miss-distance analysis against maneuvering targets
• Demonstrated delivery of guidance or control software onto a physical air vehicle that has flown, not just in simulation
• Production proficiency in C++ and Python, including embedded or real-time development under deterministic execution and latency constraints on resource-limited flight computers
• Working depth in state estimation and sensor fusion, including Kalman and extended Kalman filtering, target motion models, covariance propagation, and observability analysis
• Experience with flight dynamics and control, including autopilot and inner-loop interfaces. Including control authority and actuator saturation limits, achievable-acceleration envelopes, and position or velocity hold control
• Demonstrated use of flight or field test data for closed-loop analysis, including log-based replay, reconstruction of onboard decisions, and root-cause investigation of anomalous engagements
• Fluency with coordinate frame conventions, time synchronization, sensor latency accounting, and uncertainty representation across software interfaces
• Experience participating directly in flight or field test operations, including test planning, instrumentation requirements, range operations, and post-test data review

Responsibilities

• The GNC Engineer owns terminal guidance and the associated control path across Neros unmanned aircraft, covering the guidance law, aimpoint command, achievable-acceleration management, and the interface to flight control.
• This role is accountable for engagement accuracy against maneuvering targets under realistic conditions, including imperfect target state estimates, degraded or lost sensor track, and limited control authority late in the engagement.

Skills

GNC software

C++

Python

Kalman filtering

Flight test

Tools

C++

Python

Real-time OS

Job description

Neros is a defense technology company rebuilding America’s drone industrial base. We design and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are tested in combat, iterated at startup speed, and built at massive scale.

As drones transform warfare, Neros delivers systems the West needs to deter adversaries. We’re hiring engineers who move fast, take ownership, and get capability into warfighters’ hands in months, not years.