Senior Principal Engineer, GNC & State Estimation (R6233)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems.

As a Senior Principal Engineer, you will establish and lead the technical direction of Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) and State Estimation within Hivemind Enterprise (HME).

You will build the team and capabilities that enable customers to develop, integrate, validate, and deploy reliable autonomy across aircraft platforms.

You will bring at least 15 years of GNC domain experience, deep expertise in aircraft dynamics, flight controls, navigation, and state estimation, and a demonstrated record of delivering production autopilot or flight-control software.

Responsibilities:

• Establish the technical vision and roadmap. Own HME’s GNC and State Estimation technical strategy, architecture, and development priorities.
• Build the team from the ground up. Define the capabilities and technical roles the team needs, help recruit and assess outstanding engineers, and establish effective onboarding, mentorship, and engineering standards.
• Lead hands-on algorithm development. Design, implement, tune, and validate guidance, navigation, flight-control, and state-estimation capabilities.
• Deliver production autopilot and flight-control software. Guide capabilities from requirements and initial models through embedded implementation, integration, verification, customer deployment, and sustainment.
• Build a reusable GNC platform. Establish modular algorithms, interfaces, vehicle and sensor abstractions, configuration mechanisms, and validation tools that support multiple aircraft and customer integrations.
• Accelerate the simulation-to-flight development cycle. Work with simulation and test teams to establish high-fidelity vehicle and sensor models, automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing, Monte Carlo analysis, and regression coverage.
• Drive GNC and estimation contributions to RTA. Partner with the RTA, safety, and HME pilot teams on monitoring, protection, and recovery capabilities.
• Guide customers through technical airworthiness work. Help customers establish platform-specific assumptions, requirements, operating limits, verification plans, and supporting evidence.
• Build trusted technical partnerships across Shield AI. Develop strong working relationships with peer GNC and State Estimation leaders.

Required qualifications:

• At least 15 years of professional experience in GNC, including substantial hands-on development of aircraft flight controls, autopilot capabilities, navigation, and state estimation.
• Expert knowledge of aircraft dynamics, stability and control, guidance, and estimation, with demonstrated ability to apply that knowledge to practical flight systems.
• Deep experience with state estimation and sensor fusion, including inertial navigation, Kalman or nonlinear filtering, sensor characterization, and evaluation of estimation accuracy, consistency, and robustness.
• A demonstrated record of shipping and supporting production autopilot, flight-control, or integrated GNC software, including direct involvement in flight testing and deployment to operational aircraft or customer platforms.
• Significant experience as a technical lead, Principal Engineer, chief engineer, or equivalent, with ownership of complex technical decisions and influence across multiple engineering teams.
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, mentor, and develop strong technical talent, including experience establishing a new engineering capability or building and growing a specialist team.
• Strong current proficiency in C++ for production, real-time software, together with MATLAB/Simulink or equivalent modeling tools and Python or comparable analysis and automation tools.
• Extensive experience designing, tuning, and validating GNC systems through high-fidelity simulation, software-in-the-loop testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight-test analysis.
• Experience with safety-critical development and verification, including requirements traceability, technical reviews, configuration management, and generation of evidence supporting qualification or airworthiness.
• Experience designing reusable algorithms, libraries, interfaces, or development tools that serve multiple platforms, programs, or engineering teams.
• Ability to work effectively in a modern development environment using version control, code review, continuous integration, automated testing, and reproducible simulation and analysis workflows.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a record of establishing technical roadmaps, delivering against commitments, incorporating customer feedback, and earning the trust of senior technical peers.
• Master's degree in aerospace engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Applied Mathematics or Computer Science

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with GCAS / ACAS, detect-and-avoid, flight-envelope protection, or related flight-safety capabilities.
• Direct experience developing or validating Runtime Assurance architectures, safety monitors, recovery controllers, or assured-autonomy capabilities.
• Experience guiding customers or aircraft programs through military or civil airworthiness processes, including engagement with relevant technical authorities.
• Familiarity with DO-178C or comparable development-assurance processes and RTA guidance.
• Experience deploying navigation and estimation capabilities in GNSS-degraded or denied environments, including integration of APNT sources.
• Experience across multiple aircraft configurations, such as fixed-wing, VTOL, or rotorcraft, and adapting shared GNC capabilities to different flight envelopes.
• Advanced expertise in areas such as robust or nonlinear control, model predictive control, trajectory optimization, system identification, or advanced estimation.
• Master’s degree or PhD with an emphasis on controls, navigation, estimation, robotics, or autonomous systems.