Senior Principal GNC Engineer - Flight Control & Autonomy

Northrop Grumman Corp.; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 114,000 - 213,000; Full time

Job summary

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems is seeking a Principal or Senior Principal GNC Engineer for our South Bay Vehicle Engineering team in CA. You’ll advance guidance, navigation, and control for advanced air vehicles and autonomous platforms.

The role involves designing control laws, validating through simulations and lab tests, and supporting flight experiments. Travel up to 20% and ability to obtain a Secret clearance are required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in STEM with 5+ years of professional experience; OR Master’s with 3+ years; OR PhD with 1+ year.
• Experience with fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics.
• Experience using linear control principles to design feedback control systems.
• Experience analyzing non-linear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
• Working knowledge of autopilot functions and outer/inner loop control law performance requirements.
• Experience with MATLAB to create, process, analyze, and visually represent data.
• Experience using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
• Knowledge of logic, modes, and states for autonomous aircraft.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 20%.
• Ability to obtain a US Government Secret security clearance or higher and SAP.

Responsibilities

• Support R&D of flight control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles.
• Design, develop, implement, verify, and test GNC software and simulation tools.
• Develop outer and inner loop control laws and autonomy functions.
• Create linear/non-linear dynamic models and integrate into HIL simulations.
• Perform performance and flying qualities analyses and flight test support.

Skills

Flight dynamics

Linear control principles

Autopilot functions

Autonomy concepts

Handling qualities analysis

Education

Bachelors in STEM

Masters in STEM

PhD in STEM

Tools

MATLAB

Simulink

Stateflow

C/C++

Python

Lua

Job description

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems is seeking a Principal or Senior Principal GNC Engineer for our South Bay Vehicle Engineering team in CA. You’ll advance guidance, navigation, and control for advanced air vehicles and autonomous platforms.

The role involves designing control laws, validating through simulations and lab tests, and supporting flight experiments. Travel up to 20% and ability to obtain a Secret clearance are required.