What are the responsibilities and job description for the Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer position at Powerus?
About Powerus
Powerus is building a next-generation American autonomous systems platform designed to move, protect, and sustain critical assets in high-consequence environments. The company combines advanced autonomy, manufacturing capability, operational expertise, and strategic acquisitions to support defense, national security, critical infrastructure, and commercial operations globally.
Mission
Our mission is to deliver resilient autonomous technologies that strengthen national security, improve operational safety, and expand the capabilities of organizations operating in complex environments.
Why Join Powerus
How an aircraft holds a track in wind, recovers from a disturbance, and behaves when a sensor degrades is decided in the control laws. On unmanned platforms, with no pilot to compensate, those laws carry the whole burden.
This role owns them across a growing family of airframes, from first hover through envelope expansion.
Position Overview
Powerus is seeking a GNC Engineer to design, implement, and validate the guidance, navigation, and control systems for our unmanned aircraft. You will develop control laws and state estimation, tune across the flight envelope, build the simulation used to verify behaviour before flight, and support flight test through envelope expansion. You will work closely with aerodynamics, embedded software, and test engineering.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and implement guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for multirotor and fixed-wing platforms
- Develop state estimation and sensor fusion for attitude, position, and velocity
- Build and maintain simulation models used to validate control behaviour before flight
- Tune and validate control performance across the flight envelope and across configurations
- Support flight test, including test planning, on-site tuning, and post-flight analysis
- Analyse flight data to characterise vehicle behaviour and identify model error
- Define failure detection and safe-state behaviour for degraded sensing or actuation
- Document control architecture, gains, and validation evidence
Qualifications
- Must be located in the United States, within commuting distance of Rock Hill, SC
- Degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, or a related field
- Experience developing control systems or state estimation for aircraft, robotics, or vehicles
- Strong command of control theory and its practical application
- Proficiency with MATLAB/Simulink and with C or C for implementation
- Experience supporting or conducting flight or vehicle test
- U.S. Person status required (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)); this role involves access to ITAR- and EAR-controlled technical data
Preferred Qualifications
- Direct UAV or unmanned aircraft flight control experience
- Familiarity with PX4, ArduPilot, or comparable autopilot architectures
- Experience with Kalman filtering and GPS-denied navigation
- System identification and model refinement from flight data
- Experience with envelope expansion on a new airframe
What We Look For
We are looking for engineers who are careful in the right places. Control work rewards people who think hard about failure modes before flying and who read the log afterwards even when the flight looked fine. You should be willing to hold a schedule when the data does not support the next test point.
Equal Opportunity Statement
Powerus is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and mission-driven workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.