As a Flight Control & Dynamics Engineer at Harmattan AI, you will own control law design and system identification for high-speed autonomous airframes. You will weigh classical against learning-based methods, from tuned control laws to reinforcement-learning policies, and decide what actually flies. The role involves designing excitation maneuvers, fitting airframe models, tuning control loops, and ensuring sim-to-real transfer. You will also participate in flight test campaigns and mentor junior engineers.

Responsibilities

System Identification: Design excitation maneuvers and fit airframe models from flight data, with quantified error bounds.
Control Law Design & Tuning: Inner rate and attitude loops through outer position loops, with allocation, gain scheduling, and manual or automated tuning across the airframe family and flight envelope.
Sim-to-Real: Keep the in-house simulator faithful to the identified model, so control developed in simulation transfers to the aircraft.
Model Consumption: Turn the stability derivatives and coefficient tables from Aerodynamics into flying control.
Flight Test & Diagnosis: Verify across simulation, SITL, and HITL, including Monte Carlo campaigns, then fly and iterate from logs.
Mentorship: Depending on seniority, support the team by mentoring junior control and GNC engineers.

Requirements

Educational Background: A strong academic record with a degree in aerospace, controls, robotics, or a related STEM field. A practical track record matters more than the specific degree.
System Identification & Control: Proven, hands-on identification and control on multirotor or fixed-wing platforms, validated in flight, with depth in at least one of MPC, INDI, or geometric control.
Embedded Realization: Real-time control implementation on constrained targets, split cleanly between a microcontroller and a companion computer.
Learning-Based Control: Familiarity with reinforcement learning and simulation-based training, and the judgment to know when a learned policy beats a classical design.
Empirical and hardware-honest, disciplined about experiments and validation, grounded in real flight data.
Communicates clearly, able to present control and test results to engineers and senior stakeholders.
Thrives under pressure in a fast-paced environment with a no-task-is-too-small mentality.
Commitment: 100% dedication to Harmattan AI's mission of providing a defensive edge to allied nations through ethical, high-impact technology.

Nice to have

Bonus: Multi-airframe or hover-to-cruise transition experience.