Guidance, Navigation & Control; GNC Engineer - Early Career

About the Role

This role is designed for early-career engineers, including new graduates, with an interest in Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) and hands-on system development. Applicants to this role will not be considered for internships. Under the guidance of our senior engineering team, you will move from first-principles physics and theoretical modeling to real-time software implementation and rigorous flight analysis. We are looking for evidence-driven engineers: individuals who prioritize physical reality over opinion and have the technical conviction to derive the best solution as supported by data.

This role is designed for early-career engineers who want exposure to a multidisciplinary autonomy stack. You will work across the sim-to-real spectrum, from SITL/HITL testing with our bespoke, in-house simulation platform all the way to extensive hands-on flight testing experience with real systems.

Under the direction of experienced GNC leads, you will derive theoretical guidance laws, implement advanced filtering to robustify vehicle state estimation in contested environments, and fine-tune low-level controllers on hardware. You will contribute to the design and implementation of software spanning first-principles analysis through low-level embedded execution, supporting the development of high-performance autonomous systems.

You will focus on problems in all of the following areas:

• Guidance & Path Planning: Implement advanced guidance laws and trajectory optimization for high-speed interceptors operating across highly nonlinear, high-dynamic flight regimes.
• Navigation & State Estimation: Support development of target tracking and GPS-contested navigation, using multimodal sensor fusion, including KF variants, real-time filters, factor graphs, and related approaches, to ensure robust performance in dynamic environments.
• Active Controls & Aerodynamics: Assist in the design of high-performance active control systems, including LQR, MPC, and related approaches, for highly maneuverable, aerodynamically unstable vehicles.

• Education: BS or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field.
• High-Signal Technical Execution: Demonstrated capability to independently execute projects in high-performance applications, such as Formula SAE, collegiate rocketry (L3), UAV competitions, or high-signal internships. Ideally GNC-related.
• Software
  
  Skills:
  
  Proficiency in C++ for on-vehicle implementation and Python for analysis and simulation.
• Travel: Ability to travel as necessary to support rigorous flight testing events and campaigns.

Experience with at least some of the following fields:

• Controls: Control architectures for dynamic systems, including PID, LQR, Model Predictive Control (MPC), Adaptive Control, and related methods.
• State Estimation: EKF, UKF, VIO, or high-G target tracking.

Experience in any of the following areas is a plus:

• Simulation & Validation: Digital-twin replication and high-fidelity physics modeling.
• Flight Regimes: High-speed multirotor and rocket systems; nonlinear dynamics and transition maneuvers.
• Software Frameworks: ROS/ROS2 or other custom, lightweight middle wares.
• Real-Time Systems: Deployment on STM
  32, Jetson, and FPGA platforms, including implementation in RTOS/Linux, low-level control-loop tuning, and high-rate telemetry analysis.