Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Engineer - Ranger (R6391)

You will build and lead the Guidance & Control (G&C) team for Ranger, a fully autonomous aircraft designed for conventional runway takeoff and landing. You will own the team’s technical direction, development roadmap, and project execution, delivering flight control and flight-autonomy capabilities from requirements and architecture through flight verification.

What You'll Do

• Build and lead the Ranger G&C team. Define staffing needs, establish clear technical ownership, and develop the team through mentorship, design reviews, and hands-on problem solving.
• Own the G&C development roadmap. Translate program objectives into a phased plan for requirements development, algorithm maturation, simulation capabilities, software integration, verification, and flight testing. Establish measurable milestones and align priorities with program leadership and partner teams.
• Own project execution and delivery. Scope and estimate work, allocate resources, manage schedules and cross-team dependencies, and track progress against deliverables. Identify technical and schedule risks early, drive mitigation plans, and communicate trade-offs and resource needs.
• Define and deliver the G&C architecture, including Auto-Taxi and ATOL algorithms, inner- and outer-loop control laws, guidance, trajectory validation, flight-mode logic, and control allocation. Maintain stable, predictable aircraft performance through actuator constraints, disturbances, uncertainty, and defined degraded conditions.
• Lead integration between flight autonomy and mission autonomy through A-GRA-aligned interfaces. Establish clear responsibilities for mission-level decision-making and vehicle-level execution, including command validation, flight-mode transitions, status reporting, and contingency coordination.
• Lead development and validation of high-fidelity 6DOF simulation capabilities. Establish model fidelity requirements, validation plans, and uncertainty bounds to support control development, vehicle-level trades, and credible pre-flight performance predictions.
• Own the G&C verification strategy and supporting compliance evidence. Define requirements-based acceptance criteria and verification coverage across linear and nonlinear analysis, Monte Carlo campaigns, sensitivity and failure studies, and software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Drive cross-disciplinary trades with propulsion, aerodynamics, actuation, state estimation, embedded software, and autonomy teams. Translate G&C performance needs into subsystem requirements and resolve interface, timing, and integration issues.
• Lead G&C preparation and analysis for ground and flight testing, including test-point selection, envelope-expansion planning, pre-flight predictions, and post-flight reconstruction. Provide evidence-based flight-readiness recommendations, resolve simulation-to-test discrepancies, and drive verified corrective changes.

What You'll Bring

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in flight controls, GNC, or autonomous aircraft development, with demonstrated technical ownership of flight-vehicle systems from requirements and design through integration and flight test.
• Experience building or leading engineering teams, including establishing technical direction, assigning ownership, mentoring engineers, and delivering complex development efforts through coordinated team execution.
• Demonstrated ownership of technical roadmaps and project execution, including work scoping, effort estimation, staffing plans, milestone definition, dependency management, and technical risk reduction.
• Deep expertise in aircraft flight dynamics, classical and modern control theory, nonlinear systems, and fixed-wing control law design, including stability, performance, and robustness across the operating envelope.
• Strong experience developing or validating high-fidelity 6DOF simulations and using ground- and flight-test data to identify modeling limitations, characterize uncertainty, and improve predictive capability.
• Experience defining and executing requirements-based verification strategies, including linear and nonlinear analysis, Monte Carlo studies, integrated testing, and flight-test analysis.
• Experience integrating guidance, control, and flight-mode logic, with a clear understanding of the division between flight autonomy and mission autonomy and the interfaces needed to support feasible vehicle-level execution.
• Proficiency in C++, with experience implementing, reviewing, and debugging G&C or simulation software and addressing real-time execution constraints. Experience using MATLAB and/or Python for engineering analysis and verification.
• Strong technical judgment and communication skills, with the ability to resolve ambiguous, cross-disciplinary problems and clearly communicate decisions, assumptions, risks, and limitations to engineers and program leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading development, integration, or flight verification of autonomous fixed-wing aircraft.
• Direct experience defining, implementing, or verifying A-GRA-aligned interfaces, or integrating flight autonomy with a separate mission-autonomy provider.
• Experience building a G&C team or development capability for a new aircraft program, including establishing technical practices, simulation infrastructure, verification workflows, and development plans.
• Experience applying flight safety and airworthiness processes, deriving flight control requirements, and producing supporting artifacts such as simulation descriptions, verification reports, and flying-qualities analyses.
• Experience evaluating navigation errors, air data uncertainty, altitude-sensing limitations, latency, and data validity against flight control and ATOL performance requirements.
• Experience establishing software- and hardware-in-the-loop capabilities, automated regression testing, and CI/CD workflows using Linux, Git, and modern C++ development practices.
• Experience integrating steady-state or transient NPSS propulsion models or model outputs into a 6DOF simulation environment.
• Experience leading G&C execution in developmental flight-test programs, balancing rapid iteration with configuration control, verification rigor, and disciplined flight-readiness assessments.