GNC Engineer, Missile Defense

Location: Onsite near Denver, Colorado or Long Beach, California. Candidates must be eligible to work with U.S. Government space technology under ITAR regulations.

Base salary: $115,000–$290,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

hirify.global develops autonomous spacecraft, advanced payloads, mission software, and space-based interceptors for U.S. and allied space security.

What you will do

• Own GNC system development for missile systems, including architecture, algorithm design, verification, hardware integration, flight testing, and operational deployment.
• Design, test, and validate GNC flight software and embedded algorithms across multiple flight regimes and environmental conditions.
• Develop navigation, state estimation, and sensor fusion algorithms using IMU, GPS/INS, seeker, and other sensor data.
• Implement guidance laws, autopilots, terminal guidance, target tracking, and endgame steering logic.
• Build high-fidelity simulation environments covering aerodynamics, propulsion, atmosphere, target dynamics, sensors, and actuators.
• Verify stability, robustness, and system performance through control analysis, 6-DOF simulation, Monte Carlo analysis, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight test correlation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering, physics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of relevant GNC engineering experience in aerospace and defense, preferably with tactical missiles, interceptors, or guided munitions.
• Strong knowledge of flight dynamics, aerodynamics, control systems, rigid-body dynamics, intercept geometry, guidance laws, sensor fusion, and inertial navigation.
• Experience with C++ and/or Python for algorithm development, numerical methods, real-time control, or simulation.
• Ability to build, test, and debug flight software, real-time control systems, and simulation tools, and to drive complex problems from concept through flight test.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI U.S. government security clearance and meet ITAR eligibility requirements.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or PhD in aerospace engineering, control systems, or an equivalent discipline.
• Experience with terminal guidance, optimal or nonlinear guidance, agile missile autopilots, gain scheduling, adaptive control, or INS/GPS integration.
• Experience with aerodynamic modeling, CFD correlation, aeroservoelastic analysis, or missile GNC tools and standards.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop campaigns, flight testing, telemetry analysis, target tracking, miss distance analysis, or covariance propagation.
• Active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity participation.
• Health, dental, vision, HRA/HSA options.
• Paid time off and paid holidays.
• 401(k) and parental leave.
• Fast-paced, multidisciplinary engineering environment focused on ambitious space defense systems.