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Poseidon Aerospace is building full-size autonomous cargo aircraft capable of carrying two-ton payloads over 1,000+ nautical miles. The company operates across the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC, Oregon, and Maine, focusing on making air freight faster, cheaper, and accessible to remote and contested logistics operations.
As Senior GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control) Engineer, you will own the complete GNC architecture for autonomous cargo aircraft that operate with no pilot on board. This is a hands-on technical leadership role where you will design how the aircraft knows its position, decides its trajectory, and executes flight control with no human intervention.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own GNC architecture: control law structure, navigation solution, guidance modes, and redundancy management
- Design flight control laws across all phases (takeoff, landing, failure cases)
- Design navigation and state estimation solutions, including sensor selection criteria
- Define control responses to sensor, actuator, engine failures, and loss-of-link scenarios
- Set stability margins and performance requirements; validate across the flight envelope
- Own 6-DOF simulation fidelity and validation against flight data
- Define GNC requirements and interfaces with flight software, avionics, and flight sciences
- Define verification approach: simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, flight test
- Lead GNC flight clearance for envelope expansion and support on-site flight test
- Lead system identification and model updates from flight data
- Support system safety assessments and certification evidence for flight control
- Lead design reviews and mentor other GNC engineers
This role offers the rare opportunity to architect a flight control system from the ground up at a stage where the technical direction is still yours to set. You will see your designs fly on a real aircraft carrying meaningful payload.
REQUIREMENTS:
- B.S. in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
- 5+ years designing guidance, navigation, or control systems for aircraft, spacecraft, or comparable vehicles
- Owned GNC design for a vehicle or major flight phase from requirements through flight
- Algorithms you designed have flown on a real vehicle
- Supported a flight test campaign, including flight clearance and post-flight model correlation
- Designed control or navigation behavior for sensor or actuator failures
- Led design reviews and set technical direction for other engineers
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- GNC experience on fixed-wing uncrewed aircraft
- Experience with autonomous takeoff and landing
- Experience designing redundancy management for flight control sensors and actuators
- Experience building a simulation environment from the ground up
- Experience with model-based development and autocode under DO-178C and DO-331
- Experience with flight control system certification or military airworthiness
- M.S. or Ph.D. in controls, dynamics, or related field
