Senior GNC Engineer

Location:near Berkshire
Salary: £55,000–£70,000 depending on experience
Working pattern: Full-time, predominantly on-site
Clearance: Candidates must be eligible for UK SC clearance

Summary
Venn Group is working exclusively with an defence technology company to recruit a Senior Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer.

You will join its autonomy and software team, taking ownership of guidance, navigation and control across a varied portfolio of operational platforms. This is a hands-on position covering control-law development, state estimation, autopilot modification, simulation and flight testing. You will work from initial modelling and embedded implementation through to field trials and analysis of real flight data.

• Design, implement and tune control laws and estimators for air and ground platforms

• Develop solutions from requirements through to flight-proven embedded code

• Modify and extend PX4, ArduPilot or proprietary autopilot stacks

• Work on estimators, controllers, mixers, failsafes and hardware drivers

• Develop navigation capability for GNSS-degraded and GNSS-denied environments

• Deliver transfer alignment and INS integration between host platforms and deployed systems

• Build plant models and SITL/HITL simulation environments

• Conduct system identification using flight-test data

• Plan and support flight trials, including instrumentation and control-loop tuning

• Investigate anomalies and analyse flight logs

• Produce evidence supporting qualification and safety cases

• Contribute to wider flight-software and systems-engineering activity

• Degree in aerospace, electronic, electrical, control or robotics engineering, or a related discipline

• At least five years’ experience in GNC, flight control or state estimation

• Control design and tuning demonstrated on flying hardware

• Strong understanding of Kalman filtering and multisensor fusion

• Experience combining inertial, GNSS, visual or RF-derived data

• Source-level experience modifying PX4, ArduPilot or a proprietary autopilot

• Strong embedded C or C++ programming skills

• MATLAB/Simulink or Python for modelling and analysis

• SITL/HITL simulation and plant modelling

• Flight-data analysis, system identification and control-loop diagnosis

• Experience of degraded or denied-GNSS navigation, or strong knowledge of the underlying estimation techniques

• Eligibility to obtain UK SC clearance; some programmes may require sole UK nationality

• Transfer alignment or INS integration

• Guided weapons, launched effects or autonomous systems

• Visual-inertial odometry

• Terrain, feature or RF-aided navigation

• Tethered, launched or VTOL-transition platforms

• Managing structural coupling and vibration effects within control loops

• ROS 2

• MSc or PhD in control, estimation or robotics

• Current or previously held SC or DV clearance

• £55,000–£70,000 depending on experience

• 28 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays

• Employer pension contribution

• Occasional home working where project activity permits

• Direct involvement in prototype development and live flight trials

This role would suit a Senior GNC Engineer, Flight Controls Engineer, Control Systems Engineer, Navigation Engineer or Autonomy Engineer seeking ownership of systems from simulation through to flight.

Apply with an up-to-date CV for a confidential discussion.