Software Engineer - Controls & Autonomy

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Salary: $150,000 - $200,000 per year

A bit about us:

We are a specialized recruitment partner representing an innovative aerospace technology company in the Greater Seattle area.

Our client is developing a new generation of high-performance autonomous aircraft using novel propulsion and airframe technologies. Its work combines advanced flight controls, robotics, autonomy, and aerospace engineering to enable efficient vertical takeoff and landing, sustained hover, high-speed flight, meaningful payload capacity, and complex autonomous missions.

The company operates with the pace and ownership of a startup while tackling technically demanding, real-world aerospace problems. This is a hands-on engineering environment where individual contributors can directly influence aircraft behavior, system architecture, and flight performance.

Why join us?

Work on autonomous aircraft that move beyond theory and simulation into physical testing and flight.

Own meaningful technical problems involving flight dynamics, controls, sensing, and autonomy.
Help define control architectures for a novel aircraft and propulsion configuration.
Collaborate directly with a small, highly technical aerospace team.
Gain exposure across modeling, algorithm development, simulation, integration, testing, and validation.
Make visible contributions without the layers typically found in a large aerospace organization.
Join a company developing technology with potential applications across cargo transportation, advanced air mobility, and uncrewed aircraft systems.

Job Details

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Software Engineer specializing in Controls and Autonomy to develop and validate control algorithms for advanced VTOL and autonomous aircraft.

Working with flight-dynamics data, aircraft models, and both established and unconventional controls techniques, you will help define how the aircraft maneuvers, maintains attitude, transitions between flight modes, responds to sensor feedback, and completes autonomous missions.

This role is particularly well suited to an aerospace, robotics, or controls engineer who enjoys translating mathematical models and control theory into working aircraft systems.

Key Responsibilities
Design, develop, and refine flight-control algorithms for autonomous VTOL aircraft.
Use piloted small-uncrewed-aircraft flight-dynamics data to model aircraft behavior and inform control-law development.
Develop control strategies for takeoff, hover, transition, maneuvering, cruise, approach, and landing.
Address attitude control, stability, trimming, maneuverability, and flight-path management.
Coordinate propulsion throttle, thrust vectoring, and conventional aerodynamic control surfaces.
Integrate onboard sensors, feedback loops, state information, and telemetry into the flight-control architecture.
Develop autonomous behaviors for a variety of missions, operating conditions, and failure scenarios.
Design backup, contingency, and fault-response algorithms supporting robust aircraft operation.
Build and use simulation environments to evaluate aircraft dynamics and control performance.
Test and tune algorithms using simulated, hardware-integrated, or physical aircraft models.
Analyze test and flight data, identify performance issues, and iteratively improve control behavior.
Collaborate with aerospace, propulsion, mechanical, electrical, avionics, and software engineers.
Document algorithms, assumptions, test results, and system-level design decisions.

Required Qualifications
Bachelor's or advanced degree in Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related discipline.
Demonstrated experience with control systems, robotics, autonomous systems, or vehicle dynamics.
Strong MATLAB experience or comparable numerical modeling and controls-development experience.
Understanding of feedback control, dynamic systems, modeling, simulation, and algorithm development.
Ability to work with sensor data, telemetry, and real-world system behavior.
Evidence of hands-on robotics, autonomous-vehicle, UAV, or aircraft project work.
Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and technical communication skills.
Comfort working in a small, fast-moving engineering organization where responsibilities cross traditional discipline boundaries.

Highly Desirable Experience
Aircraft flight dynamics and flight-control-law development.
Guidance, navigation, and control-GN&C or GNC.
UAV, UAS, sUAS, drone, rotorcraft, eVTOL, VTOL, or autonomous-aircraft development.
Attitude estimation and control.
State estimation, sensor fusion, or Kalman filtering.
Stability analysis, system identification, or controller tuning.
MATLAB and Simulink.
Six-degree-of-freedom or 6-DOF vehicle simulation.
Model-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, or hardware-in-the-loop testing.
Embedded or real-time flight software.
C, C++, Python, ROS, or comparable robotics and flight-software tools.
IMUs, GPS/GNSS, air-data systems, telemetry, avionics, or flight sensors.
Autopilot, mission-planning, or autonomous-behavior development.
Fault-tolerant controls, redundancy management, or safety-critical systems.
Hands-on work with aircraft prototypes, flight-test vehicles, or physical robotic platforms.

Interested in hearing more? Easy Apply now by clicking the "Apply Now" button.

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