Controls & Dynamics Engineer

Volatus Aerospace is a global leader in aerial intelligence and drone solutions, bringing together over 100 years of combined aviation expertise. We specialize in delivering innovative, customer-focused solutions through both piloted and remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) across industries including defense, infrastructure, energy, public safety, and logistics.

Volatus Aerospace is seeking a Controls & Dynamics Engineer to develop, validate, and tune UAV flight behaviour across aircraft configurations, payloads, and operating conditions.

Working with avionics, software, and flight test teams, the engineer will improve aircraft stability, control response, and mission performance through modelling, simulation, flight data analysis, and hands‑on tuning.

• Flight behaviour and controls tuning:
  Configure and tune control loops to improve stability, tracking accuracy, disturbance rejection, and transitions between flight modes.
• Guidance and trajectory control:
  Develop and refine guidance strategies for take‑off, approach, hover, manoeuvring, landing, and other mission‑specific flight behaviours.
• Aircraft and payload dynamics:
  Model and evaluate the effects of aircraft configuration, payload mass, distribution, mounting, and movement on flight behaviour, and adapt control strategies accordingly.
• Motion compensation:
  Develop control strategies for relative positioning and operation around moving targets, launch points, or recovery locations.
• Environmental performance:
  Improve aircraft response to wind, gusts, and other operational disturbances.
• Mission logic:
  Develop and validate mission sequencing, mode transitions, pilot handover, recovery behaviours, and responses to degraded system inputs.
• Modelling and simulation:
  Develop dynamic models, identify system parameters, and assess control changes through software‑in‑the‑loop and hardware‑in‑the‑loop testing.
• Data analysis:
  Analyse flight logs and telemetry to diagnose control issues and verify tuning improvements.
• Flight test support:
  Define test objectives and acceptance criteria, support testing, and assess results with pilots and flight test engineers.
• Technical documentation:
  Maintain traceable control configurations, tuning records, model assumptions, test results, and operating limitations.

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics, Controls Engineering, or a related discipline. A relevant Master’s degree or PhD is an asset.
• Minimum of 3 years of professional experience in control systems engineering for UAVs, aircraft, robotics, or comparable dynamic systems, including practical experience with physical hardware.
• Strong knowledge of flight and load dynamics, feedback control, stability analysis, system identification, and signal processing.
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink, Python, or equivalent engineering analysis tools.
• Working knowledge of autopilot architectures, sensor interfaces, state estimation, coordinate frames, and real‑time control systems.
• Familiarity with PX4, Ardu Pilot, Veronte, or comparable flight control systems.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, technical writing, and communication skills, with experience collaborating across engineering and flight operations teams.
• Experience with rotary‑wing or heavy‑lift UAVs, suspended loads, tether dynamics, or aircraft–payload coupling is an asset.
• Knowledge of advanced control methods, including model predictive control, robust or adaptive control, gain scheduling, disturbance observers, or input shaping, is an asset.
• Experience integrating relative navigation inputs from vision‑based tracking, GNSS/RTK, inertial measurements, or telemetry is an asset.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and…