Senior Guidance and Control Engineer

At the Autonomous Robotics Research Centre (ARRC) of TII, Senior Engineers are more than just individual contributors; they are the technical anchors of our team. In this role, you will spend roughly 75% of your time heavily hands-on with GNC algorithm design, C++ development, field experiments, and data analysis. For the remaining 25%, you will be expected to step up as a technical mentor—driving project planning, aligning interfaces with other teams, and guiding the work of junior engineers. If you are a highly technical engineer who enjoys taking ownership of a project's direction without stepping away from the code, we want to talk to you.

Responsibilities

Project Steering & Team Alignment (approx. 25%)

• Act as the technical authority for the GNC team, defining the software architecture and ensuring the integrity of the guidance and control framework.

• Drive technical project planning, create development timelines, and adapt roadmaps to meet external stakeholder requests and evolving mission requirements.

• Define work packages and establish clear, rigid interfaces between various system modules to ensure clean integration across the architecture.

• Provide day-to-day technical mentorship and code reviews for mid-level and junior engineers, fostering a culture of high engineering standards.

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact, aligning GNC deliverables with avionics, integration, platform, and flight test teams.

Guidance Law Development

• Architect, implement, and evaluate advanced guidance strategies for different flight phases, with a strong emphasis on loitering, mid-course, and terminal/dive guidance.

• Develop and optimize classical and modern guidance laws (PNG, Augmented PNG, L1, Pure Pursuit, predictive/optimization-based approaches).

• Design robust guidance solutions capable of handling targets detected by multiple sensor modalities under highly dynamic conditions.

Algorithm Prototyping & Software Engineering

• Actively prototype and validate core guidance and control algorithms in MATLAB/Simulink, treating this as a critical first step in the development pipeline.

• Directly translate and optimize these prototype models into production-ready, highly efficient C/C++ code for embedded deployment.

• Act as a primary contributor to the codebase, writing industry-grade C++ and Python.

• Execute ROS/ROS2 C++ development and integration, strictly adhering to software engineering best practices (version control, unit testing, CI/CD, Docker).

• Review peer code to ensure efficiency, readability, and architectural consistency across the UAV software stack.

• Collaborate with navigation and integration teams to ensure robust end-to-end system performance.

Simulation, Field Experiments, and Validation

• Design, build, and maintain high-fidelity simulation environments to benchmark guidance law performance.

• Actively participate in real-world flight test campaigns and field experiments.

• Conduct deep data analysis on flight logs, identify performance gaps, and rapidly iterate on algorithms to improve robustness and precision.

Required qualifications and skills

• Education: Master's degree or Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Control, or a related highly technical field.

• Experience: 7+ years of hands-on experience in GNC algorithm development for UAVs or autonomous systems, including proven experience guiding projects or mentoring engineers.

• Coding Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency in C/C++ and Python for production environments. Deep expertise in MATLAB/Simulink and automatic code generation tools.

• Systems Knowledge: Strong knowledge of ROS2, PX4, and modern control system design tools.

• Hands-On Mentality: Demonstrated ability to remain a primary code contributor while steering a project; you must be comfortable prototyping in MATLAB, writing in C++, performing field experiments, and analyzing flight data.

• Technical Breadth: Solid understanding of flight dynamics, aerodynamics, sensor fusion, and state estimation algorithms.

• Project Management: Experience driving engineering timelines, managing technical debt in a fast-paced environment, and familiarity with task management tools (Jira or similar).

• Communication: Strong ability to translate complex technical challenges into clear project plans for multidisciplinary teams and stakeholders.