GNC Engineer II - Navigation

About the role

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and tune state estimation algorithms, such as extended and error-state Kalman filters and complementary filters, to estimate attitude, heading, position, velocity, AGL, and air-data states.
• Develop sensor fusion architectures that combine IMU, GNSS, magnetometer, barometric and air-data sensors, and other aiding sources such as radar or lidar altimeters and vision.
• Develop sensor fault detection and isolation, integrity monitoring, and redundancy management, and define how navigation should behave in degraded modes.
• Analyze observability, filter consistency, and navigation error budgets to inform requirements and design trade-offs.
• Develop sensor error models (bias, scale factor, misalignment, noise, latency) and characterize sensors through bench testing and methods such as Allan variance.
• Support sensor selection, mounting, alignment, and calibration, including magnetometer hard- and soft-iron calibration and IMU alignment.
• Work with the firmware and avionics teams on sensor interfaces, timing and synchronization, and integration onto the aircraft.
• Implement navigation algorithms in MATLAB and Simulink so they are ready for code generation and real-time execution on embedded flight hardware.
• Develop and maintain navigation and sensor models within the GNC simulation environment.
• Take part in design and code reviews, version control, and continuous integration practices.
• Define and verify navigation requirements through unit tests, Monte Carlo simulation, software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing, and ground and flight tests.
• Plan, support, and analyze flight tests, using flight data to assess navigation performance, tune filters, and drive improvements.
• Document designs, analyses, and test results to support verification and certification activities.

Requirements

• Master’s degree or PhD in Aerospace, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering or a related field, with a focus on estimation, navigation, or controls.
• Familiarity with GNSS-denied or alternative navigation, such as visual-inertial odometry, terrain or radar aiding, or SLAM.
• Experience with GNSS/INS integration (loosely or tightly coupled), inertial navigation mechanization, and inertial sensor error modeling.
• Experience working with sensors used in autonomy, such as cameras, lidar, and radar, and fusing them into navigation solutions.
• Experience developing navigation systems for aircraft, UAVs, multicopters, or eVTOL platforms.
• Experience with Git, continuous integration, and agile development workflows.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools, such as Claude, to speed up algorithm development, coding, and data analysis.
• Experience with fault detection, integrity monitoring, or redundancy management for safety-critical systems.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing and supporting flight test campaigns.
• Experience with air-data and wind estimation, including airspeed, angle of attack, and sideslip.
• Familiarity with aerospace standards such as DO-178C, ARP4754A, ARP4761, and DO-334.
• Interest in aviation, RC aircraft, or drones.