Senior GNC Engineer in Ascot

Senior GNC Engineer – UAV / Flight Controls

Location: near Berkshire
Salary: £55,000–£70,000 depending on experience
Working pattern: Full-time, predominantly on-site
Clearance: Candidates must be eligible for UK SC clearance

Summary
Venn Group is working exclusively with an defence technology company to recruit a Senior Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer.

You will join its autonomy and software team, taking ownership of guidance, navigation and control across a varied portfolio of operational platforms. This is a hands-on position covering control-law development, state estimation, autopilot modification, simulation and flight testing. You will work from initial modelling and embedded implementation through to field trials and analysis of real flight data.

Key responsibilities

• Design, implement and tune control laws and estimators for air and ground platforms

• Develop solutions from requirements through to flight-proven embedded code

• Modify and extend PX4, ArduPilot or proprietary autopilot stacks

• Work on estimators, controllers, mixers, failsafes and hardware drivers

• Develop navigation capability for GNSS-degraded and GNSS-denied environments

• Deliver transfer alignment and INS integration between host platforms and deployed systems

• Build plant models and SITL/HITL simulation environments

• Conduct system identification using flight-test data

• Plan and support flight trials, including instrumentation and control-loop tuning

• Investigate anomalies and analyse flight logs

• Produce evidence supporting qualification and safety cases

• Contribute to wider flight-software and systems-engineering activity

Essential experience

• Degree in aerospace, electronic, electrical, control or robotics engineering, or a related discipline

• At least five years’ experience in GNC, flight control or state estimation

• Control design and tuning demonstrated on flying hardware

• Strong understanding of Kalman filtering and multisensor fusion

• Experience combining inertial, GNSS, visual or RF-derived data

• Source-level experience modifying PX4, ArduPilot or a proprietary autopilot

• Strong embedded C or C++ programming skills

• MATLAB/Simulink or Python for modelling and analysis

• SITL/HITL simulation and plant modelling

• Flight-data analysis, system identification and control-loop diagnosis

• Experience of degraded or denied-GNSS navigation, or strong knowledge of the underlying estimation techniques

• Eligibility to obtain UK SC clearance; some programmes may require sole UK nationality

Desirable experience

• Transfer alignment or INS integration

• Guided weapons, launched effects or autonomous systems

• Visual-inertial odometry

• Terrain, feature or RF-aided navigation

• Tethered, launched or VTOL-transition platforms

• Managing structural coupling and vibration effects within control loops

• ROS 2

• MSc or PhD in control, estimation or robotics

• Current or previously held SC or DV clearance

Package

• £55,000–£70,000 depending on experience

• 28 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays

• Employer pension contribution

• Occasional home working where project activity permits

• Direct involvement in prototype development and live flight trials

This role would suit a Senior GNC Engineer, Flight Controls Engineer, Control Systems Engineer, Navigation Engineer or Autonomy Engineer seeking ownership of systems from simulation through to flight.

Apply with an up-to-date CV for a confidential discussion.