Sr. Flight Controls Engineer

Soaring is a venture-backed aerospace and defense technology company designing and manufacturing autonomous UAV systems for commercial applications and mission-critical defense logistics.As an early-stage, high-growth aerospace company, Soaring offers the opportunity to workon advanced autonomous aircraft systems in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Engineers at Soaring take ownership across the full lifecycle of development, from concept through flight tests and production.ResponsibilitiesOwn Controls Engineering, including Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) for all phases of aircraft development, including requirements definition, concept design, software integration and validation, flight test, production, customer demonstrations and field sustaining.Translate the physics of flight control avionics, aerodynamic characteristics, and mass properties of aircraft into models for real-time simulation and code generation.Design flight control laws, continually performing stability and flight performance analyses.Independently verify and validate the embedded control law software on the simulated and actual hardware.Support the development of flight control analytical tools as needed.Lead internal and customer-facing design reviews, test readiness reviews, flight briefings, and technical interchange meetings.Collaborate among peers, as part of a multi-disciplinary team (Systems, Software, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering), to solve unique and complex engineering challenges.Required QualificationsExperience with PX4, ArduPilot, or custom flight control architectures.Experience designing and implementing flight control laws.Demonstrated understanding of low- and high-speed aerodynamics, control systems, and aircraft dynamics.Experience with modeling, simulation, and analysis of linear and nonlinear dynamic systems.Demonstrated knowledge of classical and modern control theory, state estimation, linear algebra, coordinate frames, stability concepts, system dynamics, lower order modeling, and filtering techniques.Demonstrated experience implementing control/estimation algorithms directly in C/C++ for real-time systems.Ability to self-motivate and self-organize to achieve program-established deadlines; proactively working independently and collaborating with other disciplines and seeking out help when appropriate.Effective written and verbal communication on technical topics with experts in the field as well as stakeholders with various backgrounds, including internal team members, customers, and suppliers. Preferred QualificationsGraduate degree (MS or PhD) in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field with a focus on dynamic systems and control.Radio Control and hobby aircraft modelling experience.Hands-on state estimation experience (EKF/UKF), including innovation gating/outlier rejection, delay compensation, and sensor redundancy/failover.Experience with NuttX/RTOS performance and timing issues (scheduling, CPU budgets, latency/jitter).Exposure to adjacent technical areas: Aerodynamics (including Computational Fluid Dynamics), Structures (including Finite Element Method and mass property analysis), Propulsion, Power Electronics, Mechatronics (including servo-mechanical modeling), Thermal Engineering, and Systems Engineering. CompensationBase salary: $200,000Significant Stock Incentive Options