Principal or Senior Principal Guidance Navigation Controls (gnc) Engineer

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman · Aerospace · El Segundo, CA +1 · Systems/Architecture/Test

Northrop Grumman is seeking a Principal or Senior Principal Guidance Navigation Controls (GNC) Engineer to support research and development of flight control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles. The role involves designing, developing, implementing, verifying, and testing GNC algorithms and software for autonomous aircraft, developing control laws, creating dynamic simulation models, and supporting flight test activities. Experience with fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics, linear control principles, MATLAB, and Simulink is required.

What you'd actually do

  1. Support research and development of flight control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles.
  2. Design, develop, implement, verify, and test algorithms, software, and simulation tools to perform guidance, navigation and control (GNC) of autonomous unmanned aircraft.
  3. Develop control laws to meet air vehicle performance, flying qualities, and stability margin requirements both on ground and in flight.
  4. Design outer and inner loop control laws and associated logic and autonomy functions.
  5. Develop air vehicle system linear and non-linear dynamic simulation models and integrate models into software and hardware-in-the-loop simulation environments.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor's degree in a related Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) discipline with 5 years of relevant experience; OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline with 3 years of relevant experience; OR a PhD in a related STEM with 1 year of relevant experience.
  • Experience with fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics.
  • Experience using linear control principles and tools to design feedback control systems.
  • Experience analyzing non-linear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
  • Working knowledge of autopilot functions.
  • Working knowledge of outer loop control law performance requirements.
  • Experience using MATLAB to create, process, analyze, and visually represent data.
  • Experience using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
  • Familiarity with autocoding Simulink models
  • Working knowledge of logic, modes, and states for autonomous aircraft.
  • Familiarity with C/C++ programming.
  • Familiarity with Python programming.
  • Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a US Government clearance and Special Access Program (SAP) within a reasonable amount of time as determined by business needs

Nice to have

  • A current active in-scope DUS 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
  • Familiarity with Simulink Stateflow Modeling
  • Working knowledge of MIL-STD-1797 flying qualities requirements
  • Experience with autonomy algorithms (Autonomous Taxi/ Take Off and Landing, etc.) for driving control laws.
  • Experience with Lua Script programming.
  • Working knowledge of SAE-94910 performance requirements.

What the JD emphasized

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