Guidance, Navigation And Control Engineer III

Job Title: Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer III Job Description
This senior-level Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer role focuses on developing, evaluating, and testing navigation, state-estimation, sensor-fusion, guidance, and control algorithms for advanced aerospace vehicles and integrated aircraft platforms. You will take direct ownership of filtering and navigation algorithms that convert imperfect sensor measurements into accurate estimates of vehicle position, velocity, attitude, angular rates, and other critical states. Using tools such as MATLAB, Simulink, and C++, you will build high-fidelity simulation environments, model sensor errors and uncertainties, and assess integrated GN&C performance across nominal and off-nominal operating conditions. This position is designed for an engineer with hands-on experience designing or modifying filters, state estimators, sensor-fusion solutions, or related flight algorithms, and who can clearly explain the underlying mathematics, assumptions, sensor characteristics, vehicle dynamics, and performance limitations of their work.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, evaluate, and test navigation and state-estimation algorithms for aerospace vehicles and integrated aircraft platforms.
- Develop and tune Kalman filters, extended Kalman filters, unscented Kalman filters, complementary filters, and comparable estimation approaches for navigation and sensor-fusion applications.
- Fuse data from multiple vehicle sensors to produce accurate and reliable estimates of vehicle states, including position, velocity, attitude, and angular rates.
- Model sensor performance characteristics such as noise, bias, drift, scale-factor error, alignment error, latency, dropout, and measurement uncertainty.
- Develop algorithms that estimate vehicle position, velocity, attitude, angular rates, sensor biases, and other required navigation and mission-critical states.
- Support GPS and GNSS integration with inertial-navigation systems to improve overall navigation performance and robustness.
- Evaluate navigation performance when individual sensors are degraded, unavailable, delayed, or producing inconsistent measurements, and design algorithms that maintain reliability under these conditions.
- Develop or support guidance and flight-control algorithms that use navigation estimates to achieve vehicle and mission objectives for aircraft and missile-type systems.
- Build and maintain high-fidelity vehicle, sensor, actuator, environment, and mission simulation models for analysis and design.
- Develop analysis and simulation environments using MATLAB, Simulink, C++, or comparable technical-development tools.
- Perform Monte Carlo, trajectory, dispersion, sensitivity, stability, and robustness analyses to characterize algorithm and system performance.
- Evaluate algorithm performance across nominal, off-nominal, degraded, and failure conditions, and recommend improvements based on findings.
- Define algorithm performance metrics, test cases, uncertainty models, and acceptance criteria to support verification and validation activities.
- Support the transition of algorithms from desktop simulation environments into flight-software implementations and embedded systems.
- Collaborate with embedded software engineers to ensure algorithms are implemented correctly, efficiently, and in accordance with design intent.
- Support software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, laboratory, ground-test, and flight-test activities as applicable.
- Analyze test data and compare observed vehicle behavior against simulation predictions to validate models and algorithms.
- Investigate navigation errors, filter divergence, unexpected residuals, sensor anomalies, timing problems, and integration issues, and develop corrective actions.
- Support requirements development, allocation, traceability, verification, and validation for navigation, guidance, and control functions.
- Lead or contribute to integrated trade studies and analyses of alternatives for filter architectures, sensor selection, algorithm approaches, and performance trade-offs.
- Support technical-baseline definition and maturation for navigation, guidance, and control subsystems.
- Document algorithm architecture, mathematical derivations, assumptions, interfaces, tuning parameters, test results, and performance limitations in clear technical reports and documentation.
- Present technical results and recommendations during design reviews, peer reviews, readiness reviews, and customer discussions.
- Work collaboratively across GN&C, Avionics, Flight Software, Systems Engineering, Flight Sciences, Integration and Test, and Vehicle Engineering teams.
- Provide technical guidance and mentoring to less-experienced engineers when required and help build team capability in navigation, filtering, and guidance algorithms.
Essential Skills
- Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a closely related technical discipline.
- Typically 10 or more years of relevant aerospace engineering experience.
- Professional experience developing or modifying navigation, state-estimation, sensor-fusion, guidance, flight-control, or related aerospace algorithms, with direct ownership of algorithm design rather than only running existing simulations.
- Strong understanding of estimation theory, control theory, flight dynamics, linear algebra, probability, and statistical analysis.
- Advanced experience with modeling, analysis, and simulation for aerospace systems.
- Proficiency using MATLAB, Simulink, C++, or comparable technical-development tools for algorithm and model development.
- Experience working within multidisciplinary aerospace design and development teams that include hardware, software, systems, and test disciplines.
- Ability to independently solve complex technical problems, make sound engineering judgments, and communicate defensible conclusions.
- Strong technical-writing, documentation, and presentation skills, including the ability to explain underlying mathematics, assumptions, sensor characteristics, vehicle dynamics, and performance limitations.
- Substantial experience in guidance and navigation engineering, with emphasis on navigation and state estimation rather than purely controls-only or general simulation backgrounds.
Additional Skills & Qualifications
- Hands-on Kalman filter development and tuning experience, including design of filter architectures and tuning of process and measurement noise models.
- Experience with extended Kalman filters or unscented Kalman filters for nonlinear state-estimation problems.
- State-estimation and sensor-fusion algorithm development experience for complex aerospace systems.
- Experience integrating GPS or GNSS with inertial-navigation systems, including algorithm design and performance assessment.
- Practical experience with IMUs, accelerometers, gyroscopes, air-data systems, radar, vision-based sensors, magnetometers, or related sensor suites.
- Experience modeling sensor noise, bias, drift, latency, dropout, and alignment errors in simulation and analysis environments.
- MATLAB and Simulink model-development experience for vehicle, sensor, and mission simulations.
- C++ algorithm-development experience, particularly for embedded or flight-software implementations.
- Six-degree-of-freedom vehicle simulation experience, including trajectory and dynamics modeling.
- Experience performing Monte Carlo, trajectory, dispersion, sensitivity, and robustness analyses for navigation and guidance algorithms.
- Background in flight-controls or guidance-algorithm development for aircraft, unmanned systems, missiles, spacecraft, or similar platforms.
- Software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, or hardware-in-the-loop test experience for validating algorithms and implementations.
- Experience with flight-software integration and embedded implementation of navigation and guidance algorithms.
- Ground-test or flight-test data analysis experience, including correlation of simulation results against hardware or vehicle test results.
- Experience defining and maturing technical baselines for navigation and GN&C subsystems.
- Participation in trade studies and analyses of alternatives for sensors, algorithms, and architectures.
- Aerospace and defense industry experience, particularly in advanced flight systems and autonomous aerospace platforms.
- Experience supporting aircraft, unmanned aircraft, missiles, spacecraft, launch vehicles, or autonomous aerospace systems.
- Interest in solving high-value navigation problems using noisy, incomplete, delayed, and conflicting sensor data to create reliable vehicle-state estimates.
- Ability to lead complex technical decisions involving filter architecture, tuning, sensor selection, performance assessment, and algorithm trade studies.
Work Environment
This position operates primarily in a professional engineering environment in Englewood, Colorado. You will spend significant time developing algorithms, constructing simulation models, analyzing data, documenting results, and participating in technical reviews while working closely with flight software and systems teams. The role may also include occasional work in avionics laboratories, integration facilities, simulation labs, hangars, or test environments, where you will support software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, ground-test, and potentially flight-test activities. The environment emphasizes deep analytical work combined with close collaboration among hardware, software, test, systems, and vehicle engineers, offering the opportunity to follow algorithms from mathematical development through simulation, software integration, laboratory testing, and vehicle testing, and to directly influence mission performance.
Job Type & Location
This is a Contract to Hire position based out of Englewood, CO.
Pay and Benefits
The pay range for this position is $80.91 - $80.91/hr. Individual compensation offered for this position within this range will depend on many factors, including qualifications, skills, relevant experience, job knowledge, geographic location, internal equity, and other pertinent job-related factors. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job
classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be
subject to specific elections, plan, or program terms. If eligible, the benefits
available for this temporary role may include the following:

Medical, dental & vision
Critical Illness, Accident, and Hospital
401(k) Retirement Plan Pre-tax and Roth post-tax contributions available
Life Insurance (Voluntary Life & AD&D for the employee and dependents)
Short and long-term disability
Health Spending Account (HSA)
Transportation benefits
Employee Assistance Program
Time Off/Leave (PTO, Vacation or Sick Leave)
Workplace Type
This is a fully onsite position in Englewood,CO.
Application Deadline
This position is anticipated to close on Oct 2, 2026. About Actalent

Actalent is a global leader in engineering and sciences services and talent solutions. We help visionary companies advance their engineering and science initiatives through access to specialized experts who drive scale, innovation and speed to market. With a network of almost 20,000 consultants and 5,000 clients across the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe, Actalent serves many of the Fortune 500. We are proud to be an Engineering News-Record (ENR) Top 500 Design Firm for our engineering design services and a ClearlyRated Best of Staffing® winner for both client and talent service.

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