Flight Systems Engineer

SiFly • Santa Clara, CA

5d • Onsite

About The Position

SiFly Aviation is developing vertical-takeoff, long-endurance drones designed to provide helicopter-level performance with lower operating costs and complexity. The Flight Systems Engineer will create systematic ways to translate flight-test data into control-system decisions. This includes planning test campaigns, developing instrumentation and test infrastructure, analyzing data, and tuning and validating PX4 configuration and code. The role spans bench testing, integrated ground runs, flight testing, customer-site troubleshooting, and preparation of flight-test evidence for FAA submissions. The engineer will also explore and share useful AI-assisted workflows for log analysis, test-data reduction, and reporting. The position is onsite in Santa Clara, California, on a small team working with real hardware.

Requirements

• Hands-on flight-test or systems-test experience on real manned or unmanned aircraft, including building test setups.
• Repeated experience closing the loop from control systems or flight data back into autopilot parameters or code on real equipment.
• Understanding of estimation and control fundamentals, including coordinate frames, Kalman filtering, sensor fusion, and PID analysis.
• Data-analysis and scripting skills, using Python or an equivalent, to turn test data into actionable findings.
• Comfort with aircraft instrumentation, harnessing, and flight-line debugging.
• Ability to obtain and use FAA Part 107 certification if not already certified.
• First-principles thinking and willingness to investigate traditional approaches to propulsion, power systems, and radio technologies.
• Practical use of AI as a work tool, with the ability to describe a specific example of an AI-assisted workflow or analysis.

Nice To Haves

• Existing FAA Part 107 certification and practical drone piloting or field-testing experience.
• Flight-test instrumentation design, including sensors, data acquisition, wiring, and installation.
• Experience with ROS 2, MAVSDK, Linux companion computers, or safety risk-management processes for flight testing.

Responsibilities

• Plan and execute test campaigns from objectives and success criteria through test cards, instrumentation, safety, and site coordination.
• Select suitable validation methods for each question, including simulation, log replay, hardware-in-the-loop, ground testing, or flight testing.
• Tune and test PX4 parameters, control and estimation settings, and configuration, then validate changes in flight.
• Analyze flight logs and telemetry to diagnose issues across firmware, hardware, and companion computers.
• Build and maintain test infrastructure, including benches, hardware-in-the-loop setups, instrumentation, data pipelines, and dashboards.
• Manage progression from bench testing through integrated ground runs to flight, and maintain anomaly reports and configuration records that make campaigns reconstructable.
• Generate flight-test evidence for SiFly’s FAA submissions.
• Identify, develop, and share effective AI-assisted approaches to log analysis, test-data reduction, and reporting.
• Work hands-on at the bench, in the shop, on the flight line, and sometimes at customer sites to investigate deployed-system problems alongside new-product development.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed