Senior GNC Engineer

About the role

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere. Mission Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and fly guidance, navigation, and control systems for long-endurance stratospheric aircraft
• Own the GNC stack end to end: modeling, simulation, control law design, estimation, tuning, validation, and flight test
• Develop and maintain vehicle dynamics models and simulation environments
• Design and tune controllers for launch, climb, station-keeping, loiter, descent, and recovery
• Integrate GNC tightly with avionics, sensors, propulsion, and autonomy software
• Debug and iterate rapidly using flight data, hardware-in-the-loop, and field testing
• Support integration, production bring-up, and flight operations in the desert

Requirements

• 2+ years working on real GNC systems for aircraft, UAVs, spacecraft, or similarly complex dynamic systems
• Strong fundamentals in dynamics, controls, estimation, and linear systems
• Experience with state estimation (EKF/UKF), sensor fusion, and inertial navigation
• Experience designing and tuning control systems that fly on real vehicles
• Comfortable working from first principles and validating with test and flight data
• Ability to move fast, own outcomes, and troubleshoot in the field

Qualifications

• Experience with real-world aerospace systems
• Knowledge of aerospace dynamics and controls
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink or similar tools
• Experience with embedded systems and real-time control
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills

Skills

• Strong programming skills in C/C++, Python, or other relevant languages
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing
• Understanding of flight mechanics and aerodynamics
• Experience with flight test and validation processes

Benefits

• Meaningful equity
• Top market salary and bonuses
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Factory in El Segundo
• Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
• Small team, massive responsibility
• High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
• Dream desk setup
• Daily lunch
• Unlimited celsius

Pay

US salary range $120,000 - $220,000 USD

Schedule

Hiring process: Technical interview, One-on-one with CEO, Meet the team in-person