Senior GNC Engineer

Mach Industries•Huntington Beach, CA

About The Position

Contribute to the design and development of flight control systems for Mach’s fixed-wing aircraft. You’ll help design, implement, and validate flight-critical control laws across the mission profile—from takeoff through landing—working closely with senior and principal engineers to deliver robust, well-tested performance across the flight envelope.

Requirements

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or a related field.
Experience: 4–7+ years designing and deploying flight control systems for fixed-wing aircraft or high-performance UAVs, including exposure to flight test.
Strong understanding of flight dynamics, stability and controllability, and actuator/sensor modeling.
Proficiency in C++ for embedded or real-time systems; strong MATLAB and/or Python skills for modeling, system identification, and analysis.
Experience supporting verification workflows such as SIL/HIL testing, requirements validation, and safety-critical reviews.
Familiarity with modern software development practices (git, code reviews, issue tracking) and telemetry/data analysis.

Nice To Haves

Experience with energy-based control concepts, autothrottle systems, sideslip/yaw coordination, or control allocation for over-actuated vehicles.
Experience working with PX4 and ROS 2, or similar flight-control and robotics frameworks.
Exposure to aerospace development standards (e.g., DO-178C, DO-331, ARP4754A) or equivalent safety-critical engineering rigor.
Experience working on resource-constrained embedded systems with real-time performance considerations (latency, jitter, numerical robustness).

Responsibilities

Contribute to control system architecture and requirements for fixed-wing vehicles, including primary flight control, envelope protection, autothrottle/energy management, and mode logic.
Design and implement control laws that account for actuator limits, time delays, and sensor noise.
Support system identification and aerodynamic model development using wind-tunnel, CFD, and flight-test data; develop and maintain linearized models.
Implement and test fault-handling and reconfiguration strategies (sensor/actuator monitoring, control allocation, redundancy management) with an emphasis on safe degradation.
Execute verification & validation activities, including SIL/HIL testing, Monte Carlo analysis, and support of flight-readiness reviews.
Participate in flight-test planning and execution; analyze flight data, tune controllers, and iterate designs under supervision of senior technical leads.
Collaborate in design reviews and code reviews; help uphold technical standards and best practices within the controls team.