Guidance, Navigation & Controls Engineer (R2576)

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. In pursuit of this mission, Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot. Its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet (F-16), a vertical takeoff and landing drone (V-BAT), and a quadcopter (Nova). The company has offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC and abroad. Shield AI’s products and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies.

The GNC team focuses on researching and developing state-of-the-art algorithms that drive high-performance flight for the VBAT, a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. As a Controls Engineer on this team, you’ll work on an agile, mission-driven, and values-focused team grounded in first principles to push the boundaries of the state-of-the-art.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Your responsibilities include:
• Design, develop, and optimize flight control systems for a family of advanced unmanned VTOL vehicles
• Execute simulations and real-world tests of VTOL vehicles
• Extract linear aircraft state space models from nonlinear models
• Update system models leveraging system identification techniques, both offline and online
• Root-cause, triage, and resolve flight control system defects
• Improve test infrastructure, including improvements to unit test coverage, simulation fidelity, analysis tools, etc.
• Support road-mapping and planning for next-generation flight control systems
• Work with hardware teams to design and select servos, propulsion systems, inertial navigation systems, air data units, vision-based navigation systems, etc.

EXAMPLE PROJECTS:

• Next-generation controls design for the VBAT, e.g. possibly based on observer-based loop transfer recovery, LQR/LQG, MPC, adaptive control
• Improve the payload-carrying capacity of the VBAT
• Improve flight handling qualities of the VBAT
• Porting performance-critical components of our Simulink systems to C++

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• BS or higher in Aerospace, Aeronautical, Mechanical, Electrical, or Software Engineering with a focus on Control Systems
• Experience tuning and optimizing control systems in simulation and real-world for stability and performance
• Experience with C++ in a production environment
• Experience with Matlab and Simulink
• Passion for solving complex problems in a fast-moving environment
• Demonstrated record of working hard, strong communication skills, being a trustworthy teammate, and being kind to others

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Two years or more of professional experience in the area of robotics, vehicle dynamics modeling, aircraft flight controls, or simulation
• Experience with C++ 11 or newer
• Familiarity with git, bash, Python
• Familiarity with best practices for software engineering, such as test-driven development, continuous integration & delivery, containerization, etc.
• Familiarity with unmanned vehicle command and control languages, e.g. MAVLINK, STANAG 4586, etc.

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