Staff Engineer - Guidance Navigation Controls

Northrop Grumman • San Diego, CA

4d • $152,900 - $265,600

About The Position

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems is hiring a Staff Engineer - Guidance Navigation Controls in its South Bay Vehicle Engineering organization. The position is based in Rancho Bernardo, California, or Roy, Utah, and supports research and advanced design of avionics, guidance, navigation, and control systems for developmental air vehicles, weapons, and other platforms. The selected candidate will work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

The role involves developing guidance, navigation, and control capabilities for autonomous unmanned aircraft and other manned and unmanned air vehicles. The engineer will design and develop flight-control algorithms, control laws, simulation models, and autonomy functions; verify and test those systems; analyze aircraft performance and flying qualities; and support laboratory and flight-test activities. The engineer will also prepare technical analyses for development-program design reviews, including PDR and CDR.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant STEM discipline and 12 years of related engineering experience; or a master's degree in a relevant STEM discipline and 10 years of related engineering experience; or a Ph.D. in a relevant STEM discipline and 8 years of related engineering experience.
• Experience with fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics.
• Experience using linear control principles and tools to design feedback control systems.
• Experience analyzing nonlinear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
• Experience with autopilot functions.
• Experience with outer- and inner-loop control-law performance requirements.
• Experience using MATLAB to create, process, analyze, and visually represent data.
• Experience using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
• Experience with logic, modes, and states for autonomous aircraft.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 20% of the time.
• Ability to obtain a U.S. Government Secret security clearance or higher and Special Program Access (SAP).

Nice To Haves

• Current, active, in-scope U.S. Government Secret security clearance or higher, with the ability to obtain Special Program Access (SAP).
• Experience designing control laws for fixed-wing aircraft and performing handling-qualities analysis.
• Working knowledge of MIL-STD-1797 flying-qualities requirements.
• Experience with autonomy algorithms, such as autonomous taxi, takeoff, and landing, for driving control laws.
• Experience using Simulink Stateflow Modeling.
• Experience autocoding Simulink models.
• Experience with Python programming.
• Experience with C/C++ programming.
• Experience with Lua scripting.

Responsibilities

• Support research and development of flight-control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles.
• Design, develop, implement, verify, and test algorithms, software, and simulation tools for guidance, navigation, and control of autonomous unmanned aircraft.
• Develop control laws that meet air-vehicle performance, flying-qualities, and stability-margin requirements, both on the ground and in flight.
• Design outer- and inner-loop control laws and associated logic and autonomy functions.
• Develop linear and nonlinear air-vehicle dynamic simulation models and integrate them into software- and hardware-in-the-loop simulation environments.
• Perform performance and flying-qualities analysis.
• Support nonlinear simulation and hardware-in-the-loop laboratory testing.
• Support flight-test activities and analyze air-vehicle flight-test data.
• Develop analysis supporting design reviews at different stages of a development program, such as PDR and CDR.

Benefits

• Health insurance coverage.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Savings plan.
• Company-paid holidays.
• Paid time off for vacation and/or personal business.
• Employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus, depending on the position.

What This Job Offers

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