Staff Engineer - Guidance Navigation Controls (project Talon)

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

Staff Engineer for Guidance Navigation Controls (GNC) on Project Talon at Northrop Grumman, focusing on research and development of flight control algorithms for manned and unmanned air vehicles. Responsibilities include designing, developing, implementing, and testing GNC algorithms, software, and simulation tools, with a focus on autonomous unmanned aircraft. Requires experience with fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics, linear control principles, MATLAB, Simulink, C/C++, Python, and a Secret security clearance.

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 relevant Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) discipline with 11 years of related experience; OR a Master’s degree in a relevant STEM discipline with 9 years of related experience; OR a PhD in a relevant STEM discipline with 7 years of related experience.
  • Fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics.
  • Using linear control principles and tools to design feedback control systems.
  • Analyzing non-linear simulations of aircraft closed-loop dynamics.
  • Autopilot functions.
  • Outer/inner loop control law performance requirements.
  • Using MATLAB to create, process, analyze, and visually represent data.
  • Using Simulink to model dynamic systems.
  • Using Simulink Stateflow Modeling
  • Autocoding Simulink models
  • Designing autopilot functions.
  • Logic, modes, and states for autonomous aircraft.
  • C/C++ and Python programming.
  • Current, active in-scope US Government Secret security clearance or higher, with the ability to obtain Special Program Access (SAP).

Nice to have

  • Experience designing control laws for fixed wing aircraft and performing handling qualities analysis
  • 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

  • Current, active in-scope US Government Secret security clearance or higher, with the ability to obtain Special Program Access (SAP).