Guidance, Navigation Control Engineer; GNC

Position Overview

Our seeker and terminal guidance products are moving from demonstrated capability to fielded systems across long‑range strike, loitering and guided munitions, counter‑UAS, air‑launched effects, and rockets and mortars. We need a senior engineer to own the estimation and guidance core of that stack: the tracker, the filters, the fusion, the guidance law, and the navigation solution that keeps working when GPS does not.

• Design and implement multi‑target tracking pipelines for static and moving targets: initiation, gating, data association, track maintenance, and re‑acquisition after occlusion or dropout
• Develop nonlinear estimators (EKF, UKF, IMM) for target state, relative geometry, and passive ranging solutions
• Integrate multi‑modal sensor fusion across EO, IR, and inertial sources; RF where the platform provides it
• Own lock‑on‑after‑launch (LOAL) logic: acquisition, track confirmation, and handoff into terminal guidance

• Build image‑based ATD/ATR chains feeding closed‑loop guidance: detection, classification, orientation and rate estimation, and vulnerability aimpoint selection
• Develop and evaluate terminal guidance laws (proportional navigation and variants) against miss distance, seeker field‑of‑view, and control authority constraints
• Harden endgame performance in real‑world conditions: clutter, low contrast, obscuration, and high closing rates

• Create visual‑inertial navigation delivering drift‑free, absolute positional awareness through midcourse and terminal phases without GPS or laser designators
• Characterize, align, and calibrate INS/IMU systems on low‑cost, SWaP‑C‑constrained inertial hardware
• Implement georegistration, photogrammetry, and map‑matching approaches that bound inertial drift; integrate with flight stacks (PX4, Ardu Pilot)

• Write modern, object‑oriented C++ implementations of all algorithms, running inside containerized guidance modules on embedded targets (NVIDIA, Qualcomm Snapdragon, FPGA) under hard SWaP‑C and timing constraints
• Prototype in Python or MATLAB, then carry it to flight‑quality code yourself—there's no throwing it over the wall to a software team here

• Exercise algorithms in physics‑based, photorealistic simulation environments (Unreal, Unity, CSG, AFSIM, FLITES, MODTRAN, DIRSIG)
• Run Monte Carlo and hardware‑in‑the‑loop campaigns to validate performance
• Support captive‑carry and live flight test; own the anomaly investigation when telemetry disagrees with the model

• Set the algorithm architecture and mentor engineers implementing alongside you
• Engage directly with customers and partners: technical interchanges, live demos, proposals, and SBIR/STTR white papers
• At our size, the engineer who built it is the engineer who presents it

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or related field.
• 8+ years developing estimation, tracking, GNC, or seeker algorithms for aerospace or defense systems
• Proven expertise in nonlinear estimation (EKF, UKF, IMM or equivalent)
• Production experience with multi‑target tracking, data association, and track management algorithms
• Proficiency in real‑time C++ for embedded systems
• Experience with sensor fusion across multiple modalities (EO, IR, inertial, RF)
• Demonstrated capability shipping algorithm code to hardware under SWaP‑C constraints

• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in a relevant technical discipline
• 10+ years in aerospace or defense guidance/navigation/control
• Direct experience with terminal guidance law development and closed‑loop control
• Hands‑on work with image‑based detection, tracking, or target recognition (ATD/ATR chains)
• GPS‑denied or visual‑inertial navigation system design and implementation
• INS/IMU characterization, error modeling, and calibration on tactical‑grade hardware
• Flight test participation (captive‑carry and live fire)
• Proficiency in simulation tools (Unreal, Unity, AFSIM, MODTRAN, DIRSIG, or equivalent)
• MATLAB/Simulink prototyping transitioning to production code
• Customer‑fac…