Senior Systems Engineer – GNC & Flight Controls

Job description

Pivotal is the leader in the emerging market of electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft. We design, develop, and manufacture light eVTOL aircraft and are renowned for the BlackFly aircraft the world's first light eVTOL to fly manned missions and enter the consumer market. 
 
Efficient, compact, and simple, Pivotal aircraft are designed for a wide range of consumer, public service, and defense applications. Our distinctive tilt-aircraft architecture and scalable platform have been flying for over 10 years. Last year we announced our next-generation aircraft, the Helix, which is rapidly progressing toward general release and scalable production in 2026. 
 
Mobility is one of the most highly-valued areas of modern technology investments. This is the right company, in the right space, the right strategy, at the right time. If you are ready for adventure, we invite you to join our amazing team and grow with us.

About the Job 
Pivotal is the leader in the emerging market of electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft. We design, develop, and manufacture light eVTOL aircraft for personal, public service, and defense applications.

Pivotal is seeking a Systems Engineer – GNC & Flight Controls to support requirements development, system integration, and Verification & Validation (V&V) of our aircraft guidance, navigation, control, and flight-control systems.

This is a Systems Engineering role focused on translating aircraft-level needs into clear, testable system and subsystem requirements and ensuring those requirements are verified through analysis, simulation, bench testing, SIL/HIL, ground test, and flight test.
The successful candidate will have strong Systems Engineering fundamentals along with enough technical depth in GNC, controls, embedded software, or autonomous vehicles to work directly with the engineers designing and implementing these systems. This is not primarily a modeling or simulation-development position; the focus is requirements quality, interfaces, traceability, verification, and system-level technical closure.

Responsibilities
• Develop, decompose, allocate, and maintain aircraft and subsystem requirements for Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC), flight controls, estimation, sensing, and related embedded software functions.

• Own requirements and verification artifacts in Jama, including traceability, relationships, baselines, change management, verification methods, and objective evidence.

• Translate aircraft-level behavior and safety needs into clear, measurable, testable requirements for GNC, embedded software, sensors, actuators, and supporting hardware.

• Work directly with GNC and software engineers to ensure requirements accurately capture intended control-law behavior, operating envelopes, modes, transitions, fault responses, degraded operation, and system interfaces.

• Develop and maintain Verification & Validation plans, verification matrices, test requirements, procedures, and reports.

• Define appropriate verification methods including analysis, inspection, simulation, Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), bench testing, ground testing, UAV flight testing, and crewed flight testing.

• Review verification results and objective evidence and drive requirements to formal verification closure.

• Maintain bidirectional traceability from stakeholder and aircraft-level requirements through subsystem/software requirements, implementation, verification activities, and test evidence.

• Support definition and management of interfaces between GNC, flight-control software, sensors, actuators, flight computers, electrical systems, aircraft dynamics, and other subsystems.

• Partner with GNC engineers to review MATLAB/Simulink models, control architectures, state machines, mode logic, and simulation results from a Systems Engineering and requirements perspective.

• Review software implementation and development artifacts sufficiently to confirm requirements intent and traceability, including working with Git-based repositories and C/C++ and Python code.

• Participate in requirements and design reviews including SRR, CoDR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and aircraft or flight-readiness reviews.

• Support system-level integration, aircraft bring-up, anomaly investigation, requirements clarification, and root-cause activities.

• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, unverified assumptions, and ambiguous requirements before they become integration or flight-test issues.

• Work cross-functionally with GNC, embedded software, electrical, aeromechanical, autonomy, flight test, safety, and program teams to resolve multidisciplinary technical issues.

• Contribute to practical Systems Engineering processes that provide appropriate rigor and traceability without creating unnecessary development overhead.

Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering,

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