Staff Engineer, Flight Controls - X-BAT (R4813)

Job Description

In this role, you will contribute to the flight control system for XBAT, with responsibility for delivering stable, predictable, and operationally robust performance across all phases of flight, including vertical takeoff, hover, transition out-bound, wing-borne flight, transition in-bound, and precision recovery.

What you'll do

• Design and implement flight control laws and supporting logic across multiple flight regimes.
• Build and mature high-fidelity 6DOF simulation environments used for control development and ensure accurate pre-flight performance predictions.
• Execute verification activities, including linear analysis, Monte Carlo campaigns, disturbance/sensitivity/degraded operation testing, and HIL validation.
• Diagnose and resolve simulation-to-test mismatches, including unidentified dynamics and modeling gaps.
• Support flight test operations and contribute to rapid iteration between flights.
• Work closely with propulsion, aero, actuation, sensors, state estimation, and autonomy teams to ensure accurate integrated system performance in the 6DOF simulation environment.
• Mentor, teach, and up-skill younger engineers.

Required qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in flight controls / GNC on real flight vehicles, with demonstrated contributions from design through test.
• Experience performing one or more of the following technical flight control assignments:
• Vehicle Modeling and Simulation: Demonstrated experience implementing time-accurate mathematical models of the vehicle aerodynamics, mass properties, fuel system, propulsion system, sensors, actuators into a 6DOF simulation environment.
• Control Law Design: Demonstrated experience designing inner and outer loop control laws for fixed-wing aircraft using classical or modern control techniques.
• Control Allocation: Demonstrated experience designing control allocation algorithms for over-actuated systems handling actuator saturation, rate limits, failures and degradation.
• Guidance and Autonomy Integration: Demonstrated experience designing and testing real-time trajectory generation algorithms.
• Verification and Validation: Demonstrated experience executing linear, nonlinear, and Monte Carlo Analyses in a 6DOF simulation environment.
• Sensitivity Studies: Demonstrated experience executing sensitivity studies, worst-case disturbance analysis, and/or failure detection and accommodation studies validating control robustness against requirements.
• Flying Qualities Report: Demonstrated experience characterizing aircraft flying qualities against tailored MIL-HDBK-516 Section 6 requirements within a high-fidelity 6DOF Simulation framework.
• Flight Test Support: Demonstrated experience in test planning, envelope expansion strategy, and test point selection.
• Post-Flight Analysis: Demonstrated experience analyzing flight data, comparing predicted vs actual behavior, performing system identification and model refinement tasks, and implementing control design or simulation model updates.
• Strong background in aircraft flight dynamics and 6DOF simulation.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to mentor and up-skill junior engineers.
• Proficiency in C++, MATLAB/Simulink, and/or Python.
• Able to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Preferred qualifications

• Autonomous systems or missile/UAV GNC background.
• Familiarity with: Sensor and air data systems, CI/CD pipelines and modern DevSecOps practices.
• Experience integrating NPSS propulsion models (transient and steady state) into a 6DOF simulation environment.
• Experience with HIL or integrated simulation/test environments and Linux-based development workflows (Git, etc.).
• Experience operating in rapid development environments with tight iteration loops between simulation and test.