Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer (R4815)

The role

You will design, implement and flight-test autonomous shipboard recovery guidance for XBAT, aiming for precise recovery to a moving ship in GPS-degraded and GPS-denied settings. You will own recovery guidance algorithms and their integration with relative navigation, flight controls and recovery hardware within an established G&C team.

What you will do

• Design and implement ship-relative guidance for approach, station keeping, alignment and terminal recovery.
• Develop deck-motion compensation and landing-timing strategies.
• Work with state estimation and sensing teams to define relative-navigation requirements and keep guidance robust to errors, latency and sensor dropouts.
• Implement recovery sequencing and contingency logic, including hold, wave-off, go-around, retry and responses to lost navigation.
• Develop and integrate real-time guidance software in C++ with flight controls, autonomy, embedded and recovery-system teams.
• Define recovery performance requirements and verify them through 6DOF simulation, Monte Carlo analysis, and software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Support test planning, flight readiness assessments and flight operations; analyze test data and drive improvements between tests.
• Provide technical direction within the recovery-guidance effort, mentor engineers, and communicate design decisions and results across teams.

Required qualifications

• Demonstrated hands-on experience designing, implementing and flight-testing guidance laws for autonomous shipboard recovery, including recovery using relative navigation without GPS/GNSS.
• Strong understanding of moving-platform guidance, ship-relative reference frames, deck motion, and terminal position, velocity and attitude constraints.
• Experience integrating guidance with relative-navigation systems and assessing effects of navigation bias, noise, latency and dropouts.
• Strong background in flight dynamics and guidance and control, including guidance demands, aircraft tracking bandwidth and control authority.
• Proficiency in C++ for real-time algorithm implementation and MATLAB/Simulink or Python for algorithm development and analysis.
• Experience executing verification and validation through simulation, hardware integration, flight testing and post-flight analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to own a technical capability, resolve problems across subsystem boundaries, and work with navigation, controls, software and test engineers.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Nice to have

• Full-scale, at-sea flight-test experience with autonomous shipboard recovery.
• VTOL or rotorcraft experience involving precision recovery to constrained or significantly moving landing platforms.
• Experience characterizing recovery performance across ship motion, wind over deck, ship airwake, turbulence and degraded visibility.
• Experience integrating vision, infrared, lidar, radar or cooperative RF sensing into a relative-navigation and recovery system.
• Experience supporting ship-aircraft dynamic-interface testing, recovery-envelope development, flight safety or airworthiness.
• Familiarity with Linux-based development, Git, automated testing and CI/CD workflows.
• Ability to obtain S//SAR access.

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity
• Benefits package for full-time regular employees
• Temporary benefits package for temporary employees (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Before you apply

• Offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.
• A U.S. security clearance is required; S//SAR access is preferred.
• Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.

About the company

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company that builds intelligent systems to protect service members and civilians. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies.