Pivotal
Staff GNC Engineer – Flight Controls
- Location
- Palo Alto, CA, United States
- Work type
- On-site · Full-time
- Salary
- USD 200,000 – 235,000 / year
- Posted
- (4 days ago)
About the role
About the Role
The GNC team at Pivotal develops the flight control and navigation algorithms that let our aircraft fly safely and precisely, including on the Helix family of aircraft. We are looking for a Staff GNC Engineer to lead flight control law development on an aircraft program: owning the control law architecture and its design, tuning, and verification from simulation through flight test.
You will set the technical direction for how our aircraft are controlled in hover, transition, and forward flight. That includes defining the control law architecture and design criteria, using system identification and flight data to improve our models, and making sure the control laws meet stability, performance, and handling qualities requirements. You will also be a team lead for flight controls, setting priorities for the team, overseeing its technical work, and mentoring the engineers on it, while working closely with the navigation, firmware, aeromechanical, systems engineering, safety, and flight test teams.
The ideal candidate has a track record of taking flight control laws from design to flight on real aircraft, ideally VTOL, rotorcraft, or eVTOL, and the judgment to make sound design and flight test decisions with incomplete information. This role is a strong next step for an engineer who has grown through hands-on flight controls work and is ready to lead a team.
Responsibilities
Control Law Architecture & Design
Own the architecture of the inner- and outer-loop flight control laws, including control modes, gain scheduling, control allocation, and envelope protection. Define the criteria used to evaluate control law designs and trade-offs, such as stability margins, bandwidth, disturbance rejection, handling qualities, and robustness. Design and tune control laws across the flight envelope, including degraded and failure conditions such as motor failures, using frequency-domain methods and tools such as CONDUIT.Flight Dynamics & System Identification
Plan and lead system identification of the aircraft and its subsystems from flight and ground test data, using frequency-domain methods such as CIFER. Use identification results and flight data to validate and improve the flight dynamics models and simulation environment the team relies on.Requirements, Verification & Flight Test
Define flight control requirements, including stability, performance, and handling qualities requirements, with the systems engineering and safety teams. Set the verification strategy for the control laws, including linear analysis, Monte Carlo and worst-case simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight test. Plan, lead, and analyze flight tests with the flight test team, making risk-informed decisions between flights and resolving differences between simulation and flight.Team Leadership
Serve as a team lead for flight controls: plan and prioritize the team’s work, assign tasks, track progress, and keep the team aligned with program schedules. Mentor and develop the engineers on the team, from early-career to Senior, review their designs and analyses, and raise the bar for control law development. Advise program leadership and other teams on decisions that affect flight controls, such as actuator, sensor, and aircraft configuration trade-offs.Education
Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
8+ years of industry experience in flight controls or GNC with a Bachelor’s degree, 6+ years with a Master’s degree, or 3+ years with a PhD, or equivalent experience.
Experience
Demonstrated experience taking flight control laws from design through flight test on real aircraft, including owning key design decisions.
Deep understanding of aircraft flight dynamics, including modeling, linearization, and dynamic stability modes.
Strong command of classical and modern control theory, including frequency-domain analysis, state-space methods, and robustness analysis.
Experience designing and tuning multi-loop flight control architectures, such as cascaded loops, explicit model following, or dynamic inversion, with gain scheduling across a flight envelope.
Experience with frequency-domain analysis and system identification of aircraft or rotorcraft from test data.
Experience planning and analyzing flight tests to assess control law performance and handling qualities.
Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink for control design, modeling, and simulation.
Proficiency in Python or MATLAB for flight data analysis, and in C or C++ for writing application-level code.
Experience leading the work of other engineers, such as serving as a technical or team lead on a project, planning and assigning work, and reviewing designs.
Strong communication skills, including presenting technical trade-offs and recommendations to engineers and leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s degree or PhD in Aerospace Engineering or a related field, with a focus on flight dynamics or flight controls.
Experience with eVTOL, tiltrotor, rotorcraft, or other VTOL aircraft, including control through the transition between hover and forward flight.
Experience using CONDUIT and CIFER.
Experience with handling qualities specifications and evaluations, such as ADS-33, MIL-DTL-32742, and MIL-STD-1797, including piloted simulation evaluations.
Experience with envelope protection, control allocation for over-actuated aircraft, and failure accommodation.
Experience developing flight controls for both piloted and autonomous aircraft.
Experience as a team lead or people manager for a flight controls or GNC team.
Experience with Git, continuous integration, and agile development workflows, including automated simulation-based regression testing.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools, such as Claude, to speed up algorithm development, coding, and data analysis.
Experience developing flight control software under DO-178C and DO-331, and with ARP4754A and ARP4761 processes.
Experience with hardware-in-the-loop and integrated simulation test environments.
Piloting or RC piloting experience, or a strong interest in aviation.
Attributes aligned with Core Values
- Safety Above All: Demonstrates a proactive safety mindset by embedding safety into daily work, identifying and mitigating risks, encouraging open dialogue about safety concerns, and continuously improving practices and protocols.
- Customer Focus: Puts customers at the center of every action by understanding their challenges, delivering meaningful value, and supporting their success.
- Work Better Together: Seeks and values diverse perspectives, builds cross-functional relationships, and fosters trust through empathetic, fact-based communication and commitment to shared decisions.
- Be the Pilot: Drives results with clarity and purpose by focusing on what matters most, adapting to change, taking initiative, and owning outcomes.
- Embrace the Unknown: Navigates ambiguity with resilience and bold thinking, challenges the status quo, and combines innovative ideas with practical approaches to overcome obstacles and drive progress.
- Respect for People: Fosters a high-performance culture grounded in respect, professionalism, and support by balancing high expectations with a healthy, collaborative environment and being a trusted, dependable teammate.