Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer

Description

You will develop and deploy guidance, navigation, target-tracking, and control functions for an interceptor platform. You will own a focus area within the GNC stack and collaborate across teams to integrate algorithms with perception, flight-control, simulation, and operator systems. You will validate performance through simulation and flight testing, and use field-log analysis to reproduce failures and improve system performance.

Responsibilities

• Develop and deploy GNC, target-tracking, and control functions for the interceptor platform

• Create guidance algorithms that convert mission objectives and estimated vehicle/target states into feasible control commands, including predictive approaches for target maneuvers

• Develop and integrate state-estimation, sensor-fusion, and target-tracking with uncertainty modeling and short-horizon predictions

• Develop and tune flight-control algorithms for stable, responsive, and feasible aircraft behavior across the operating envelope

• Integrate algorithms through ROS 2, MAVLink, and related interfaces with perception, flight-control, simulation, and operator systems

• Validate performance using simulation, recorded-data replay, SITL/HITL, and flight testing

• Analyze field logs, reproduce failures, isolate root causes, and improve system performance

Requirements

• Degree in robotics, aerospace, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, computer vision, or comparable technical field

• Several years of hands-on experience (student clubs, internships, or working-student positions considered)

• Strong fundamentals in guidance, control, vehicle kinematics and dynamics, state estimation, optimization, and dynamical systems; deep expertise in at least one area

• Strong implementation skills in C++ or Rust and experience with ROS 2

• Knowledge of coordinate frames, quaternions, NED/ENU conventions, timing, and filtering

• Experience with interception or predictive guidance and PID or model-based control, trajectory optimization, or model-predictive approaches

• Experience with PX4, ArduPilot, MAVLink, or similar flight-control ecosystems

• Experience with system identification, flight-dynamics modeling, target tracking, or GNSS-denied navigation

• Experience with simulation, SITL/HITL, flight-log analysis, structured flight testing, or multi-vehicle autonomy

• Include a detailed description of hands-on projects with the application (photos, GitHub links, videos, or drawings)