Principal Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) Engineer

The posting, as Chaos Industries wrote it

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com .

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Principal GNC Systems Engineer who will own the guidance, navigation, and control architecture for the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) program, with particular emphasis on multi-aircraft interoperation — the behaviors, algorithms, and simulation environments needed to design, verify, and validate how multiple MMA air vehicles fly, coordinate, and interact with one another in shared airspace or mission scenarios. This role requires hands-on experience building and using 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) simulations involving multiple interacting aircraft, not just single-vehicle GNC development, and is responsible for ensuring the platform's GNC design supports safe, predictable, and effective behavior at the scale and density implied by a "massed" aircraft concept.

Responsibilities

• Own the guidance, navigation, and control architecture for the MMA air vehicle, including flight control laws, navigation/state estimation, and guidance/trajectory management.
• Design and develop control laws and guidance algorithms appropriate to the platform's flight envelope, autonomy level, and modular/mass-production constraints.
• Define sensor fusion and state estimation approaches (e.g., GPS/INS integration, relative navigation between aircraft where applicable) supporting both single-vehicle flight and multi-aircraft operations.
• Partner with Avionics (owner of onboard avionics and Ground Control Station architecture) to ensure GNC algorithms are correctly implemented within the avionics hardware/software architecture and flight control computer constraints.
• Develop and maintain 6DOF simulation environments capable of modeling multiple MMA aircraft operating simultaneously, including vehicle-to-vehicle interaction, relative positioning/separation, formation or collaborative behaviors, and deconfliction logic as applicable to the program's operational concept.
• Use multi-aircraft 6DOF simulation to design, test, and verify guidance and control behaviors under realistic mass-employment scenarios (e.g., multiple simultaneous launches/recoveries, coordinated maneuvering, formation-keeping, collision avoidance).
• Define simulation architecture (real-time vs. non-real-time, distributed/networked simulation across multiple simulated vehicles,

[…]
ntrols discipline preferred.

• 15+ years of guidance, navigation, and control engineering experience for aircraft or unmanned aircraft systems.
• Demonstrated, hands-on experience developing and using 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) simulations involving multiple interacting aircraft (not limited to single-vehicle 6DOF simulation).
• Strong background in flight control law design, state estimation/navigation algorithms, and stability/performance analysis.
• Experience supporting flight test planning, execution, and data correlation back to simulation/analysis predictions.

Preferred Requirements

• Experience with modular, attritable, low-cost, or mass-producible aircraft programs
• Ability to obtain/maintain Secret/Top Secret/SCI clearance

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits : 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
• Our Perks: Free daily lunch while you're working onsite, fully-stocked kitchen, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Team Growth: 500+ employees and counting across 5 global offices

Salary Range: $210,000 - $338,000

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

Recruiting Agencies: CHAOS Industries does not accept unsolicited resumes or outreach. Unsolicited submissions will not be reviewed or compensated.

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