Principal Navigation Engineer

Mach Industries • Huntington Beach, CA

3d • $230,000 - $265,000

About The Position

Mach Industries is seeking a Principal Navigation Engineer to lead development, integration, and flight validation of navigation systems for autonomous aircraft and related defense platforms. The position owns navigation technical architecture, performance, and maturation across mission phases, while leading the Navigation team’s execution and development. It combines principal-level technical authority with hands-on engineering leadership and people management.

The engineer will define navigation architecture, resolve estimation and integration challenges, establish engineering rigor, develop team talent, and ensure navigation capabilities meet program objectives from requirements development through flight test. The role requires translating mission needs into technical plans, balancing engineering rigor with program speed, and delivering reliable navigation systems for challenging operating environments.

The role initially manages approximately three direct reports and works closely with Guidance, Controls, Avionics, Embedded Software, Aerodynamics, Mechanical Engineering, Test, Supply Chain, and program leadership. Mach Industries is a defense technology company founded in 2023 with approximately 350 employees, focused on next-generation autonomous defense platforms and decentralized defense systems.

The listed salary range is $230,000–$265,000 USD in base salary. The company describes its compensation package as including performance-based incentives, equity or stock options, healthcare, dental and vision plans, retirement savings, paid time off, and professional-development funding. Employment may be subject to U.S. export-control authorization requirements, including ITAR and EAR restrictions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, robotics, mathematics, physics, or a related technical field.
• Typically 10 or more years of relevant experience developing, implementing, and testing navigation or state-estimation systems for aircraft, missiles, launch vehicles, spacecraft, high-performance UAVs, robotics, or comparable autonomous systems.
• Demonstrated ownership of navigation systems through multiple development phases, including requirements, architecture, algorithm development, implementation, verification, integration, and flight test.
• Deep understanding of inertial navigation, state estimation, Kalman filtering, sensor fusion, stochastic processes, observability, and navigation error propagation.
• Strong knowledge of navigation sensors, including IMUs, GNSS receivers, magnetometers, barometers, and other aiding sensors.
• Experience designing and evaluating estimation algorithms under realistic sensor errors, vehicle dynamics, computational constraints, and timing limitations.
• Experience with Monte Carlo analysis, uncertainty quantification, covariance analysis, requirements-based verification, and SIL/HIL environments.
• Strong understanding of navigation system calibration, alignment, integration, and validation using ground- or flight-test data.
• Proficiency with MATLAB/Simulink or Python for modeling, simulation, algorithm development, and performance analysis.
• Experience with C or modern C++ for production or embedded implementations.
• Fluency with modern engineering workflows, including Git, code review, continuous integration, issue tracking, requirements traceability, and configuration management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical decisions, organize team execution, coordinate multidisciplinary activities, and drive deliverables to completion.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, provide constructive feedback, develop engineering talent, and address performance or execution issues.
• Strong communication skills, engineering judgment, initiative, and accountability.
• Must meet the stated U.S. citizenship, permanent-residency, refugee, asylee, or export-authorization eligibility requirements for access to controlled information, as applicable.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, controls, robotics, or a related field.
• Experience fielding navigation systems for autonomous fixed-wing aircraft, missiles, or high-performance unmanned systems.
• Experience formally leading a small engineering team, managing direct reports, or owning multidisciplinary technical execution.
• Expertise in advanced estimation techniques, including extended and unscented Kalman filtering, nonlinear filtering, smoothing, factor graphs, or optimization-based estimation.
• Experience with GNSS-denied or GNSS-degraded navigation, including visual, terrain-relative, radar-aided, or other alternative navigation methods.
• Experience with high-dynamic inertial navigation, strapdown mechanization, attitude estimation, and coordinate-frame transformations.
• Knowledge of navigation sensor selection, characterization, calibration, environmental qualification, and make-versus-buy evaluation.
• Experience with estimator integrity monitoring, fault detection and isolation, measurement rejection, and navigation performance monitoring.
• Familiarity with integrated guidance, navigation, and control architectures and the effects of navigation uncertainty on closed-loop vehicle performance.
• Demonstrated ability to establish technical standards, improve engineering processes, allocate resources, and influence system-level decisions across multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture, roadmap, execution, and delivery of navigation capabilities from requirements through design, implementation, verification, integration, and flight test.
• Translate mission objectives and vehicle concepts into navigation requirements, sensor specifications, interface definitions, performance budgets, verification criteria, engineering plans, and team deliverables.
• Design, analyze, and mature navigation algorithms for inertial navigation, state estimation, sensor fusion, sensor calibration, alignment, integrity monitoring, and fault detection and isolation.
• Develop robust estimation solutions that account for sensor errors, environmental disturbances, vehicle dynamics, computational constraints, and modeling uncertainty.
• Establish methods for evaluating estimator observability, convergence, consistency, robustness, integrity, and degraded-mode behavior.
• Lead technical discussions and design reviews, substantiate architecture and algorithm decisions with analysis and test evidence, and serve as technical authority for navigation architecture, algorithms, sensor selection, and technical trade studies.
• Identify technical deficiencies and risks, develop corrective-action and mitigation plans, and drive issues to resolution.
• Lead navigation performance analysis, uncertainty quantification, covariance analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, sensitivity studies, and error-budget development.
• Develop and maintain navigation simulation models, sensor error models, and software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop verification workflows.
• Drive production implementation of navigation algorithms in embedded, real-time software, reviewing numerical stability, computational efficiency, coordinate conventions, timing, initialization, and fault handling.
• Define ground and flight test objectives, instrumentation requirements, success criteria, and requirements-based verification plans.
• Lead navigation data analysis, model correlation, performance assessment, anomaly investigation, and corrective-action validation.
• Ensure navigation algorithms and hardware are characterized and validated against system-level requirements throughout development and flight testing.
• Evaluate and select navigation sensors and hardware, including IMUs, GNSS receivers, aiding sensors, and integrated navigation solutions.
• Define sensor performance requirements and lead quantitative trade studies covering performance, environmental robustness, size, weight, power, cost, availability, and integration complexity.
• Evaluate make-versus-buy decisions for navigation hardware, algorithms, and integrated solutions; assess suppliers, component limitations, maturity, configuration control, and lifecycle risks.
• Define sensor characterization, calibration, qualification, and acceptance-test requirements.
• Partner with Avionics, Electrical, Mechanical Engineering, Embedded Software, and Supply Chain teams on hardware selection, integration, and lifecycle support.
• Lead and develop a small Navigation team, initially managing approximately three direct reports; establish responsibilities, priorities, objectives, deliverables, and performance expectations.
• Delegate technical ownership while maintaining accountability for team outcomes; provide feedback, mentorship, coaching, and professional-development opportunities.
• Address performance issues, technical blockers, unclear ownership, and team inefficiencies; foster technical rigor, accountability, collaboration, constructive challenge, and continuous improvement.
• Prioritize engineering activities, make timely decisions within delegated authority, develop recommendations for ambiguous problems, and balance performance, reliability, complexity, cost, schedule, and program risk.
• Communicate decisions with recommendations, supporting evidence, alternatives, and risks; take ownership of technical and team outcomes.
• Coordinate navigation requirements, interfaces, integration activities, dependencies, and cross-functional deliverables with engineering disciplines and program leadership.
• Contribute to system-level trade studies and concepts of operations, identifying navigation requirements, performance limitations, uncertainty impacts, and integration risks.
• Communicate progress, technical risks, resource needs, schedule impacts, and mitigation plans to leadership and stakeholders.
• Establish reusable estimation methods, analysis tools, engineering standards, and development processes; allocate resources to improve system performance, reliability, risk reduction, and execution.
• Build team capabilities that enable independent ownership of increasingly complex navigation work and reduce reliance on individual engineers.

Benefits

• Performance-based incentives tied to individual and company performance.
• Stock options or equity participation.
• Healthcare/health insurance.
• Dental insurance.
• Vision insurance.
• Retirement savings plans.
• Paid time off.
• Funding for continuing education, training, and career growth/professional development.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal