Flight Control Engineer

Flight Control Software Engineer | Maidenhead | Onsite

There aren't many engineering roles where you can change the flight-control software, walk outside, put it on an aircraft and see how it actually flies.

I'm working with one of the UK's most exciting autonomous systems businesses, developing heavy-lift UAVs for demanding real-world applications. They're now looking for a Flight Control Software Engineer to take a key role in how these aircraft fly, respond and perform.

You'll work directly on autopilot and flight-control systems, developing, integrating and tuning software across platforms such as Ardu Pilot, PX4 or Beta flight.

The work will cover everything from control-loop tuning and flight dynamics through to sensor integration, state estimation and analysing flight data to understand and improve aircraft behaviour.

We're particularly interested in experience with:

• Flight-control algorithms and PID / cascaded control-loop tuning
• C/C++ development within embedded or real-time systems
• IMUs, GNSS and other navigation / flight sensors
• SITL/HITL, simulation and flight-test environments
• MAVLink, CAN/DroneCAN or similar UAV protocols
• Analysing flight logs and turning the data into actual improvements on the aircraft

You don't need to tick every box. Strong flight-controls knowledge and genuine hands-on UAV experience are what matter most - particularly if you've built, modified, tuned or flown your own systems.

This is largely onsite in Maidenhead, where engineering, integration, manufacture and flight development happen closely together. You'll also work a 9-day fortnight, giving you a three-day weekend every other week.

You'll need to be eligible for BPSS screening.

If you're the person who'd rather spend their day figuring out why an aircraft isn't behaving as expected and then making it fly better, this is probably worth a conversation.