Flight Controls and Modeling Engineer

About the position

Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world's leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation's biggest challenges. We are looking for an experienced flight controls simulation engineer who wants to contribute to making airplanes that fly themselves. You will help create the simulation tools needed for development and testing, participate in flight test and flight data analysis, and integrate and tune automatic flight controls for our aircraft autonomy system on various aircraft. You will also collaborate across Merlin to develop novel, certifiable systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.

Responsibilities

• Help create the simulation tools needed for development and testing (aircraft nonlinear model (6-DOF) update using system identification techniques, etc)
• Participate in flight test and flight data analysis to validate aircraft dynamics, actuator and LRU modeling
• Integrate and tune automatic flight controls for our aircraft autonomy system on various aircraft - DOD projects
• Write Requirements for high level and low level automated flight control functions and integration for different aircraft types
• Verify control law performance on multiple aircraft
• Create, test, and verify Simulink control law and system logic/processing models according to Merlin's development standards, and participate in certification activities
• Collaborate across Merlin to develop novel, certifiable systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.

Requirements

• BS in Aerospace/Mechanical/Electrical Engineering
• 5+ years of experience developing aircraft simulations using system identification of flight test data to facilitate the rapid design and testing of flight control systems
• Experience developing and certifying control systems for fixed wing aircraft, with demonstrated understanding of fixed wing aircraft dynamics, integration and certification tasks
• Experience decomposing systems requirements into high level requirements and low level requirements/models, and knowledge of how to define integration/performance requirements for automatic flight control systems integration with the other areas of the avionics system
• Experience working in Model Based Development and certification of flight control systems, including proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink or another model-based development toolset
• Experience designing, implementing, and testing software for real-time systems
• Experience developing certified software under RTCA DO-178

Nice-to-haves

• MS/PhD in Aerospace Engineering and/or Controls
• Experience analyzing military guidance materials for impact on safety of flight and automatic control system design
• Flight Test experience writing test cards and integrating test systems for automated flight controls into various aircraft, to validate aircraft models, validate control system performance and perform failure testing
• Pilot license
• Experience working in an Agile development environment with open-source software tools

Benefits

• Comprehensive relocation assistance
• Catered lunches featuring a rotating menu
• Assortment of snacks
• Selection of beverages, including coffee, tea, and other drinks
• Top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match)
• Work/life integration
• Professional development support