Guidance, Navigation, and Control; GN&C) Engineer

Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) Engineer Company Overview

Fortastra designs and delivers resilient, high-performance spacecraft that safeguard critical orbital assets and ensure freedom of action in space. We integrate advanced autonomy, sensing, and control into systems engineered for reliability, speed, and scale. Our culture values simplicity, accountability, and disciplined execution — empowering every engineer to think systemically, act decisively, and build with purpose. Aggressive innovation. Disciplined execution. Strength among the stars.

You will join Fortastra’s Engineering Division, responsible for the design, development, and test of flight systems across our autonomous spacecraft portfolio.

Fortastra is seeking a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer to architect, implement, and validate flight-critical algorithms supporting autonomous rendezvous, proximity operations (RPO), formation flying, and precision maneuvering. The ideal candidate combines deep technical rigor in control theory, state estimation, and orbital mechanics with hand-on experience integrating algorithms into embedded flight software and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environments.

• Design, implement, and tune GNC algorithms for relative motion, formation flying, and autonomous RPO.
• Develop and validate attitude determination and control systems (ADCS) and orbit determination filters.
• Model and simulate orbital dynamics, spacecraft trajectories, and environmental disturbances.
• Perform state estimation and sensor fusion using IMUs, GPS, star trackers, LiDAR, and optical navigation sensors.
• Integrate GNC algorithms into embedded flight software (C/C++ and Python) and test in HIL and flight-like environments.
• Conduct Monte Carlo analysis and performance verification under uncertainty and failure scenarios.
• Collaborate with systems, avionics, and autonomy teams to deliver mission-ready architectures.

• B.S. or M.S. in Aerospace, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering, or related discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in spacecraft, launch vehicle, or autonomous system GNC.
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink, Python, and C/C++.
• Demonstrated experience with Kalman filtering, nonlinear control, and state estimation.
• Proven ability to transition algorithms from simulation to flight in operational environments.
• Work 5 days on-site in Torrance, CA
• U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain or have an active TS/SCI clearance

We are a small, high-impact team building the next generation of autonomous orbital control systems for national security space. At Fortastra, leaders own outcomes from first principles through flight and directly shape the future of resilient, mission-critical spacecraft autonomy.

We value engineers and operators who prioritize sound judgment, candor, technical rigor, bias for action, and intellectual honesty over corporate consensus. We care about the caliber of the system you build and the speed at which you solve problems.

A high-performing startup is built on dense talent, not organizational bloat. A single exceptional engineer designs, tests, and delivers faster than a bloated committee. We intentionally maintain a lean, elite engineering crew where every contributor directly moves the needle on the mission.

We hire domain experts to execute, not to micromanage them. You own your systems end-to-end, from initial architecture and hardware design to testing and deployment. With absolute ownership comes the responsibility to deliver mission critical reliability.

The best execution happens when teams are provided…