Skyways is building the future of air transportation with fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They are seeking a Senior Flight Controls Engineer to own the design, implementation, and validation of control systems for their autonomous aircraft, ensuring safe and reliable operations.
Responsibilities:
- Design, implement, and tune flight control algorithms for autonomous fixed‑wing and VTOL aircraft
- Own control laws end to end, including requirements definition, simulation, flight code, and validation
- Develop and maintain control system models in simulation environments to support analysis and testing
- Analyze flight test data and logs to diagnose issues and improve performance
- Collaborate closely with avionics, autonomy, mechanical, and flight test teams to integrate and validate control systems
- Support ground and flight testing, including on‑site test campaigns when needed
- Continuously improve robustness, fault tolerance, and performance across a growing operational envelope
Requirements:
- Strong fundamentals in control theory, dynamics, and state estimation
- Experience implementing flight or vehicle control systems in production code
- Comfort working in C++ and Python in embedded or real‑time systems
- Hands‑on experience with simulation, controller tuning, and flight or field testing
- Ability to reason from first principles and debug complex, cross‑disciplinary problems
- Comfort operating in an early‑stage environment with incomplete requirements and fast iteration cycles
- Due to U.S. government contract requirements, this role is limited to U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents, or candidates from specific countries authorized under applicable export control regulations
- Experience with UAVs, aerospace systems, or autonomous vehicles
- Familiarity with PX4, ArduPilot, or similar flight control stacks
- Experience with hardware‑in‑the‑loop or software‑in‑the‑loop testing
- Background in fixed‑wing, VTOL, or hybrid aircraft control systems