Senior GNC & Flight Controls Engineer — Onsite in PA

Pivotal; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

401k plan

Job summary

Pivotal is seeking a Systems Engineer – GNC & Flight Controls to translate aircraft-level needs into clear, testable requirements and to ensure verification through analysis, bench testing, SIL/HIL, and flight testing. Candidates will work with GNC, embedded software, sensors, actuators, and flight computers, leveraging Jama, MATLAB/Simulink, and C/C++/Python.

This role focuses on requirements quality, interfaces, traceability, and system-level closure, collaborating with cross-functional teams

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a technical discipline (aerospace, electrical, mechanical, systems).
• 5+ years in complex aerospace, automotive, robotics, autonomous, or safety-critical electromechanical systems.
• Strong requirements engineering with traceability and verification.
• Experience with verification activities for hardware/software systems.
• Experience with Jama or equivalent tools (DOORS, Polarion, CodeBeamer).
• Knowledge of GNC, flight controls, vehicle dynamics, state estimation, autonomous systems.
• Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink; understanding control models and state machines.
• Ability to read embedded software and work with C/C++, Python, Git.

Responsibilities

• Develop, decompose, allocate, and maintain aircraft and subsystem requirements for GNC, flight controls, estimation, sensing, and embedded software.
• Own verification artifacts in Jama, including traceability, baselines, change management, verification methods, and objective evidence.
• Translate aircraft-level behavior and safety needs into clear, measurable, testable requirements for GNC, embedded software, sensors, actuators, and hardware.
• Collaborate with GNC and software engineers to ensure requirements capture control-law behavior, envelopes, modes, transitions, and fault responses.
• Develop and maintain Verification & Validation plans, matrices, test requirements, procedures, and reports.
• Define verification methods including analysis, inspection, simulation, SIL, HIL, bench testing, ground and flight testing.
• Review verification results and drive requirements to formal verification closure.
• Maintain bidirectional traceability from stakeholder requirements through to test evidence.

Skills

GNC & flight controls

Requirements engineering

Verification & validation

MATLAB/Simulink

C/C++ & Python

Git

Systems Engineering

Traceability

Education

Bachelor's degree in Aerospace/Mechanical/Electrical/Systems Engineering

Tools

Jama

DOORS

Polarion

CodeBeamer

Job description

Pivotal is seeking a Systems Engineer – GNC & Flight Controls to translate aircraft-level needs into clear, testable requirements and to ensure verification through analysis, bench testing, SIL/HIL, and flight testing. Candidates will work with GNC, embedded software, sensors, actuators, and flight computers, leveraging Jama, MATLAB/Simulink, and C/C++/Python.

This role focuses on requirements quality, interfaces, traceability, and system-level closure, collaborating with cross-functional teams