GNC Engineer - Actuation Systems (Aerospace)

Location: Torrance, California, or Rio Rancho, New Mexico, United States

Company

hirify.global is an early-stage aerospace and defense company developing and delivering advanced defense systems.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and tune closed-loop control systems for flight vehicle actuators.
• Develop position, velocity, force, torque, and current control architectures, including feedforward, filtering, compensation, anti-windup, and command shaping.
• Model electromechanical actuator dynamics and build high-fidelity models for vehicle and six-degree-of-freedom simulations.
• Perform system identification, parameter estimation, stability and robustness analysis, and correlation against component, bench, integrated, and flight-test data.
• Implement control algorithms in embedded flight software and develop Software-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop validation environments.
• Collaborate with GNC, avionics, embedded software, mechanical, electrical, and test engineers to deliver integrated flight-ready actuation systems.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical, computer engineering, or a related technical field.
• Strong fundamentals in feedback controls, dynamics, or electromechanical systems.
• Programming experience in Python, Rust, C, C++, Julia, or a similar technical computing language.
• Experience analyzing dynamic systems through coursework, research, internships, projects, or professional work.
• Ability to work across software, electrical, mechanical, and controls disciplines.
• Access to export-controlled information may require applicable U.S. Government authorization, security clearance, citizenship, or other eligibility requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with motor and servo control, DC/BLDC/PMSM motors, drive electronics, sensors, mechanical transmissions, and actuator sizing.
• Knowledge of classical and state-space controls, observers, disturbance estimation, nonlinearities, uncertainty analysis, and robustness assessment.
• Experience with embedded or real-time control software, SITL/HITL testing, simulation integration, and flight-like hardware.
• Background in aerospace, robotics, automotive, industrial automation, or other high-performance motion-control systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Early-stage environment with significant ownership and direct impact on the company’s mission.
• Close collaboration across engineering disciplines.
• Generous benefits package.
• Equal-opportunity workplace with reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process.