UAV Flight Controls Engineer; ArduPilot

Role Overview

The ideal Flight Controls Engineer at Precision AI is someone who can design, implement, and tune UAV flight control and autopilot software, then validate those changes quickly on real aircraft in the field. You’ll work in a multidisciplinary environment alongside embedded, mechanical, GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control), and software engineers, developing autopilot-based control strategies that directly impact UAV stability, safety, and spray performance from concept through flight testing.

You will primarily work within an Ardu Pilot-based autopilot stack, but we are open to candidates with deep PX4 or similar autopilot experience who have also spent meaningful time working with Ardu Pilot. You’ll spend your days inside the flight control firmware, designing and tuning control loops, analyzing flight logs, and iterating rapidly between bench tests, simulation, and live flights to improve platform behavior.

Some days you’ll be extending or modifying flight modes and controllers; other days you’ll be in the field, adjusting parameters and validating performance under agricultural shock, vibration, wind, and dust.

This role will work out of our Calgary office due to the hand-on nature of testing, integration, and UAV flight verification and validation.

• Design and tune attitude, position, and altitude control loops for multirotor, fixed-wing, and/or VTOL UAVs, with a focus on low-altitude agricultural missions.
• Develop and modify flight control modules (e.g., attitude control, motors/mixers, flight modes, failsafes) within our Ardu Pilot-based stack to support Precision AI’s airframes and mission profiles.
• Define control objectives and performance metrics tied to safety, stability, and spray accuracy in real-world field conditions.
• Implement control logic that accounts for non-linear aircraft behavior, disturbances, saturation, delays, and sensor noise.
• Support integration of control algorithms into embedded implementations in partnership with firmware teams, ensuring real-time and resource constraints are respected.

• Build and maintain dynamic models of the UAV platform and subsystems (actuators, sensors, airframe responses) to inform control design and tuning.
• Perform stability analysis using time-and-frequency-domain techniques (e.g., step responses, Bode plots) to converge on stable operating regions and robust tuning.
• Develop and validate assumptions around sensors and estimation (rate limits, latency, noise characteristics, update timing) and understand their impact on control performance.
• Use tools such as MATLAB or Python to prototype and evaluate control loops, tuning approaches, and non-linear behaviors before and alongside flight testing.
• Document modeling assumptions, control architectures, and tuning rationale for repeatable and auditable engineering decisions.

• Build and run simulations (including software-in-the-loop or equivalent) to de-risk control strategies before flight, while recognizing that final validation happens in the field.
• Design focused test plans for tuning and validation, including step responses, disturbance testing, and controlled flight envelope expansion.
• Support frequent field testing and iterative tuning under real agricultural environments (shock, vibration, wind, dust), with new code changes expected to fly on short time scales once basic checks are complete.
• Analyze flight logs and test data to identify instabilities, coupling effects, and performance bottlenecks, then implement improvements quickly in code and configuration.
• Define and refine failsafes, geofencing, and recovery behaviors to protect people, aircraft, and…