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.ResponsibilitiesProject 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.