eVTOL Flight Controls Engineer
The job description
Tech stack. flight control laws, MATLAB, Simulink, model-based design, handling qualities evaluation, fly-by-wire architectures, redundancy management, piloted simulation
About the role
You will join an eVTOL aircraft company to design the control laws that make a distributed-propulsion aircraft feel predictable to the pilot across hover, transition, and cruise. This team owns stability, handling qualities, and the fault management logic that keeps the aircraft controllable when sensors or propulsors fail. Your work is what stands between a novel configuration and an aircraft a commercial pilot can fly safely every day, and test pilots will evaluate your designs directly. You will work in tight loops with the simulation, software, and flight test teams, and your control laws will be the most pilot-visible engineering on the aircraft.
What you will achieve
- Design and tune flight control laws covering hover, transition, and cruise, meeting handling qualities targets in piloted simulation before hardware exists.
- Build the redundancy and fault management logic that keeps the aircraft controllable through sensor, actuator, and propulsor failures without pilot heroics.
- Deliver control law updates tuned from flight test data within days of each test flight, accelerating envelope expansion sortie by sortie.
- Validate control laws on hardware-in-the-loop rigs before first flight, catching integration issues on the bench instead of in the air.
- Produce the control law design artifacts and verification evidence the certification team needs for the flight controls compliance package. Your package includes requirements traceability, robustness analyses, and hardware-in-the-loop results that close findings without rework.
What you will bring
Must-haves
- 2 to 5 years developing flight control laws for rotorcraft, eVTOL aircraft, UAVs, or fly-by-wire airplanes with piloted evaluation behind you.
- Strong classical and modern control theory, including PID, LQR, gain scheduling, and robust control methods applied to real vehicles.
- Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink with a model-based design workflow from requirements through autocode.
- Understanding of handling qualities criteria and how piloted evaluations are planned, run, and scored.
- Experience with redundancy management and failure transient analysis for flight-critical systems.
- Degree in aerospace engineering, controls, or a closely related field.
Nice-to-haves
- Familiarity with the DO-178C software development process for flight-critical code.
- Experience with control allocation across distributed propulsion units.
- Background supporting flight test, including real-time data monitoring in the control room.
- Knowledge of structural mode interaction and aeroservoelastic considerations.
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