Senior Flight Controls Engineer

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