UAS System Engineer – ArduPilot & Flight Control

Description

We are looking for an experienced UAS System Engineer to join our airborne systems engineering team and serve as a key technical authority for ArduPilot-based unmanned aircraft systems, including multirotor and fixed-wing platforms.

The role requires a strong system-engineering background combined with deep, hands-on expertise in ArduPilot, flight control, aircraft sensors, avionics, and system integration.

The engineer will support the airborne system engineering team across aircraft development, integration, testing, troubleshooting, and flight operations, and will work closely with software, avionics, control, mechanical, and flight-test teams.

A key aspect of the role is the ability to bridge aircraft behavior, flight-control logic, ArduPilot configuration, and software implementation.

The ideal candidate is not only an ArduPilot user, but a system engineer who understands why the aircraft behaves the way it does and can connect aircraft-level behavior to the underlying system architecture.

The candidate should be capable of moving seamlessly between:

Aircraft Dynamics → Sensors → ArduPilot → Flight Control → Parameters → Logs → Software → Flight Behavior

and be able to identify, analyze, and resolve system-level issues across these domains.

Responsibilities

UAS System Engineering

• Serve as a technical focal point for ArduPilot-based UAS platforms.
• Lead system-engineering activities related to aircraft avionics, flight control, sensors, and autopilot functionality.
• Develop and maintain a deep system-level understanding of ArduPilot architecture, parameters, flight modes, control logic, sensors, estimators, and interfaces.
• Configure and maintain ArduPilot parameters for different aircraft configurations.
• Understand the operational and flight-dynamic impact of ArduPilot parameters and configuration changes.
• Define and document aircraft-specific ArduPilot configurations and parameter sets.
• Define system and operational logic implemented through or integrated with ArduPilot.
• Translate aircraft-level requirements into subsystem, software, avionics, and control requirements.
• Support the definition and implementation of new aircraft capabilities within the ArduPilot ecosystem.
• Perform system-level trade-offs and support technical decision-making across the airborne system.

Flight Control & Aircraft Dynamics

• Define and configure the aircraft flight-control architecture within ArduPilot.
• Analyze aircraft stability and control behavior.
• Configure, tune, and optimize flight-control loops.
• Perform hands-on PID tuning for the relevant control loops.
• Analyze the interaction between aircraft dynamics, sensors, actuators, control loops, and autopilot behavior.
• Evaluate control authority, actuator saturation, response characteristics, oscillations, and coupling between axes.
• Support tuning and optimization across different operating conditions and flight-envelope regions.

Flight Log Analysis & Troubleshooting

• Perform detailed analysis of ArduPilot flight logs.
• Investigate abnormal aircraft behavior, flight events, control issues, sensor anomalies, and system failures.
• Correlate flight behavior with autopilot parameters, sensor data, actuator commands, and control-loop performance.
• Perform root-cause analysis of airborne system events.
• Provide technical support to other airborne system engineers during integration, testing, and flight-test activities.
• Define corrective actions and configuration changes based on flight-data analysis.

Sensor & Avionics Integration

• Lead the system-level integration of new sensors and avionics into the ArduPilot ecosystem.
• Define requirements and interfaces for IMU, GNSS, magnetometers, air-data sensors, altitude/range sensors, navigation sensors, actuators, propulsion interfaces, and mission-specific sensors.
• Define sensor configuration, calibration, redundancy, priority, and failure-handling logic.
• Evaluate sensor performance and its impact on navigation, estimation, and flight-control performance.
• Support integration and validation of new hardware and drivers together with software teams.

System & Software Interface

• Work closely with embedded software and application software teams.
• Translate aircraft-level and operational requirements into clear software requirements and interfaces.
• Define control and operational logic for implementation by software teams.
• Participate in software architecture and design discussions related to aircraft functionality.
• Define and review interfaces between ArduPilot, onboard computers, sensors, payloads, and other airborne systems.
• Support debugging across the boundary between aircraft, autopilot, embedded software, and onboard computing.
• Review software implementation from a system and aircraft-behavior perspective.

Integration & Flight Testing

• Support aircraft integration and flight-test activities.
• Define test objectives and required telemetry/logging for system and control validation.
• Analyze flight-test results and recommend configuration, control, or software changes.
• Compare expected system behavior with actual flight performance.
• Support incremental expansion of the aircraft flight envelope.

Requirements

• B.Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Control Engineering, or a related engineering discipline.
• Proven experience in UAS system engineering.
• Extensive hands-on experience with ArduPilot is mandatory.
• Deep understanding of ArduPilot configuration, parameters, flight modes, logging, and system behavior.
• Strong experience analyzing ArduPilot flight logs and diagnosing complex aircraft/system behavior.
• Strong understanding of flight dynamics, aircraft stability, and flight-control systems.
• Hands-on experience with control-loop and PID tuning.
• Experience integrating sensors and avionics into unmanned aircraft.
• Understanding of navigation, state estimation, sensor fusion, and airborne sensor architectures.
• Strong understanding of the interaction between software, flight-control systems, avionics, sensors, and aircraft dynamics.
• Proven ability to work effectively with embedded and application software development teams.
• Strong multidisciplinary system-engineering capabilities

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with both multirotor and fixed-wing UAS platforms.
• Experience modifying, extending, or developing functionality within ArduPilot.
• Familiarity with the ArduPilot source code and software architecture.
• Experience with MAVLink and related communication interfaces.
• Experience with SITL/HIL simulation environments.
• Experience with scripting and engineering analysis tools such as Python or MATLAB.
• Experience with high-performance or highly dynamic unmanned aircraft.
• Experience with flight-test engineering and flight-data analysis.