GNC Engineer - Controls

About the Role

The GNC team at Pivotal develops the flight control and navigation algorithms that let our aircraft fly safely and precisely, including on the Helix family of aircraft. We are looking for a GNC Engineer II who focuses on flight controls to evaluate and tune our existing control laws, so the aircraft has stable, responsive, and predictable handling across the flight envelope.

You will use CONDUIT and our existing simulation environment to analyze the control laws against stability and performance criteria, tune their gains, and check their behavior in Monte Carlo and full-mission simulations before they go to flight test. You will work closely with the GNC engineers who own the control law architecture, as well as the firmware, aeromechanical, and flight test teams.

The ideal candidate has a solid grounding in linear control theory and aircraft flight dynamics, and enjoys the analytical work of understanding why a control system behaves the way it does and how to improve it. Experience with frequency-domain control system analysis is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

Control Law Analysis & Tuning

• Analyze existing control laws against stability and performance criteria such as gain and phase margins, bandwidth, disturbance rejection, and command tracking.
• Tune control law gains and parameters with CONDUIT to meet these criteria across the flight envelope.
• Assess how actuator and sensor dynamics, time delays, and saturation affect control system stability and performance.
• Update control law gains and parameters in our MATLAB and Simulink models and support their release into flight software.

Simulation & Verification

• Run Monte Carlo studies in our existing simulation environment that vary aircraft parameters, disturbances, and failures to evaluate control law robustness.
• Help identify worst-case conditions and failure scenarios for simulation-based verification, and run and analyze those cases.
• Set up and improve automated integration tests that simulate complete flight missions and check the results against requirements.

Flight Test & Data Analysis

• Support and analyze flight tests, comparing flight data with simulation predictions to assess control performance and refine tuning.
• Document analyses, tuning changes, and test results to support verification activities.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.

Experience

• 2+ years of industry experience in GNC or flight controls, or a Master’s or PhD with research focused on control systems or flight dynamics.
• Strong foundation in linear control theory, including transfer functions, state-space models, and frequency-domain analysis such as Bode and Nichols plots and stability margins.
• Solid understanding of aircraft flight dynamics, including equations of motion, linearization, and dynamic stability modes.
• Hands-on experience analyzing and tuning feedback control systems, such as cascaded PID loops, on hardware or in high-fidelity simulation, whether through industry, research, student teams, or personal projects.
• Experience using simulation to evaluate control system performance, including Monte Carlo or parametric studies.
• Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink for control design, modeling, and simulation.
• Proficiency in Python or MATLAB for analyzing test and flight data.
• Proficiency in C or C++ for writing application-level code.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and communication skills, and the ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering or a related field, with a focus on flight controls or flight dynamics.
• Experience using CONDUIT for control system analysis and optimization.
• Familiarity with explicit model-following, dynamic inversion, or other control architectures used in safety-critical aviation.
• Familiarity with handling qualities and flight control specifications such as ADS-33, MIL-STD-1797, and MIL-DTL-9490.
• Experience developing flight controls for VTOL aircraft, multicopters, rotorcraft, or eVTOL platforms.
• Experience with Git, continuous integration, and agile development workflows, including automated simulation-based regression testing.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools, such as Claude, to speed up algorithm development, coding, and data analysis.
• Experience with fault detection, or with analyzing control system behavior under failure scenarios such as motor or actuator failures.
• Experience with frequency-domain system identification using CIFER or similar tools.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing and supporting flight test campaigns.
• Interest in aviation, RC aircraft, or drones.

Attributes aligned with Core Values

• Safety Above All: Demonstrates a proactive safety mindset by embedding safety into daily work, identifying and mitigating risks, encouraging open dialogue about safety concerns, and continuously improving practices and protocols.
• Customer Focus: Puts customers at the center of every action by understanding their challenges, delivering meaningful value, and supporting their success.
• Work Better Together: Seeks and values diverse perspectives, builds cross-functional relationships, and fosters trust through empathetic, fact-based communication and commitment to shared decisions.
• Be the Pilot: Drives results with clarity and purpose by focusing on what matters most, adapting to change, taking initiative, and owning outcomes.
• Embrace the Unknown: Navigates ambiguity with resilience and bold thinking, challenges the status quo, and combines innovative ideas with practical approaches to overcome obstacles and drive progress.
• Respect for People: Fosters a high-performance culture grounded in respect, professionalism, and support by balancing high expectations with a healthy, collaborative environment and being a trusted, dependable teammate.