Principal GNC Engineer (Autonomous Defense Platforms)

Location: On-site in Huntington Beach, California, United States. Employment may be conditioned on authorization to receive U.S.-controlled technology without export-license sponsorship, and U.S. work authorization is required.

Salary: $240,000–$280,000 per year, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global is a rapidly growing defense technology startup developing next-generation autonomous defense platforms and scalable decentralized defense systems.

What you will do

• Own the end-to-end GNC architecture and technical roadmap across launch or takeoff, mission operations, recovery, and landing.
• Translate mission objectives and vehicle concepts into requirements, interfaces, performance budgets, and verification criteria.
• Design and mature guidance algorithms, control laws, state-estimation solutions, gain schedules, and control-allocation strategies.
• Lead flight-dynamics modeling, system identification, Monte Carlo analysis, model correlation, and performance assessment across the operating envelope.
• Drive production implementation of flight-critical algorithms in embedded real-time software and establish software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop verification.
• Lead flight-readiness reviews, test planning, range execution, telemetry analysis, anomaly resolution, technical decisions, and engineering mentoring.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, robotics, physics, mathematics, or a related technical field.
• Typically 10 or more years of experience designing, implementing, and testing GNC systems for aircraft, missiles, launch vehicles, spacecraft, high-performance UAVs, or comparable autonomous systems.
• Demonstrated ownership of GNC systems through requirements, analysis, implementation, verification, integration, and flight test.
• Deep knowledge of flight dynamics, stability and control, classical and modern control theory, state estimation, trajectory generation, and system identification.
• Proficiency with MATLAB and Simulink, plus C or modern C++ for production or embedded implementations.
• Experience with Monte Carlo analysis, uncertainty quantification, requirements-based verification, SIL/HIL environments, flight testing, Git, code review, continuous integration, and configuration management.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, controls, robotics, or a related field.
• Experience fielding autonomous fixed-wing aircraft or high-performance unmanned systems.
• Expertise in nonlinear, adaptive, model-predictive, LQR/LQG/LTR, robust control, or control allocation for over-actuated vehicles.
• Experience with GNSS/INS navigation, multi-sensor fusion, terrain- or vision-aided navigation, seekers, radar, EO/IR, datalinks, or mission-autonomy systems.
• Familiarity with PX4, ROS 2, real-time operating systems, resource-constrained processors, DO-178C, digital twins, or model-based systems engineering.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on technical leadership with ownership of complex vehicle-level decisions and outcomes.
• Collaboration with aerodynamics, propulsion, avionics, embedded software, and test teams.
• Competitive salary with performance-based incentives and equity participation.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance, retirement savings, and paid time off.
• Funding for continuing education, training, and professional development.