UAS Autonomous Navigation and Control Engineer

We are looking for an Autonomous Navigation and Control Engineer to develop and improve guidance, navigation and flight-control capabilities for unmanned aerial systems. This is an engineering role focused on autonomous flight algorithms, control systems and autopilot integration. It is not a manual drone-piloting position.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement and tune flight-control algorithms, including attitude, rate, altitude, position, velocity and trajectory controllers;

• Develop guidance and autonomous navigation functions such as waypoint navigation, path following, trajectory tracking, return-to-home and autonomous take-off and landing;

• Work with PID and cascaded control architectures, feedforward control, gain scheduling and other modern control techniques;

• Develop or integrate state-estimation and sensor-fusion algorithms using IMU, GNSS, magnetometer, barometer, optical-flow, camera, LiDAR or similar sensors;

• Integrate algorithms with flight controller platforms such as ArduPilot, PX4 or custom flight-control systems;

• Analyse flight logs, diagnose control or estimation problems and optimise system performance;

• Validate solutions through simulation, Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop and flight testing;

• Develop fail-safe and degraded-mode behaviours for sensor failures, GNSS loss, communication loss and other abnormal conditions;

• Collaborate with embedded software, perception, hardware, systems and operations teams.

Profile

• Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Control Systems or a related field;

• Strong knowledge of control theory, aircraft or rigid-body dynamics and autonomous navigation;

• Practical experience developing or tuning PID controllers or other control algorithms;

• Experience with C++, Python or C;

• Knowledge of state estimation, sensor fusion and Kalman filtering;

• Experience with UAV autopilots, MAVLink, ROS/ROS 2 or embedded computing platforms;

• Familiarity with simulation tools such as Gazebo, ArduPilot SITL or PX4 SITL;

• Ability to analyse telemetry and flight data and participate in field-testing activities.

Valued Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas will be considered an advantage:

• Fixed-wing, multirotor or VTOL control;

• Model Predictive Control, LQR or nonlinear control;

• Trajectory planning and optimisation;

• Real-time or safety-critical embedded systems.

We are looking for someone with a practical, analytical and safety-conscious engineering mindset, capable of taking autonomous flight functions from simulation to real-world flight validation.

Benefits and Career Opportunities

• Join a multidisciplinary and innovative team;

• Gross monthly salary ranging from 1.400€ to 1.700€, depending on experience;

• Meal allowance of €10.20 per working day (paid via meal card);

• Health insurance (Fidelidade);

• Join a multidisciplinary and innovative team;

• Stable employment contract (permanent contract);

• Opportunities for professional growth and career development in a relaxed, collaborative environment with a strong culture of continuous learning.

We Value Diversity

We promote equal opportunities and diversity and encourage all qualified candidates to submit their applications.