Guidance & Control Software Engineer

Guidance & Control Software Engineer (Interception Systems)
Location: North London - Hybrid
Type: Contract - Outside IR35
Rate: Starting at 50 per hour DOE

Our client develops advanced autonomous weapon and interception technologies designed for high-speed target engagement in contested environments.

The programme centres on a vision-guided one-way aerial system capable of autonomously detecting, tracking, and intercepting manoeuvring objects. The software architecture combines real-time perception with predictive guidance and control.

This role will be central to the development of the onboard flight and guidance stack, implementing estimation, tracking and control algorithms in performance-critical C++ code. The engineer will work closely with perception, simulation and hardware teams to ensure reliable terminal behaviour under real-world conditions.

The Guidance & Control Software Engineer position suits an engineer with experience in missile guidance, air defence, seekers, or high-dynamic autonomous vehicles rather than conventional UAV autopilot development.

• Guidance & Control
• Develop predictive guidance and control algorithms for autonomous interception
• Implement proportional navigation, pursuit guidance or equivalent terminal control laws
• Design trajectory prediction and time-to-impact logic for manoeuvring targets
• Integrate perception outputs into stable closed-loop control behaviour
• Tune and validate behaviour across dynamic envelopes and degraded sensing conditions

• Estimation & Tracking
• Develop state estimation and tracking filters (e.g. Kalman based approaches)
• Handle uncertain and intermittent measurement data
• Fuse onboard sensors and vision-derived measurements
• Prevent divergence and oscillatory behaviour in terminal phase

• Software Implementation
• Implement real-time flight software in modern C++
• Optimise performance for embedded compute constraints
• Support hardware-in-the-loop and simulation environments
• Work with safety-critical and deterministic execution constraints

• Integration & Testing
• Collaborate with perception and simulation engineers
• Analyse flight logs and engagement performance
• Support ground and flight trials
• Debug instability, tracking loss, and intercept miss distance issues

• Analytical and physics-driven problem solving
• Comfortable working with incomplete or ambiguous data
• Collaborative across perception, hardware and systems teams
• Pragmatic and delivery focused
• Ownership mindset with strong accountability
• Calm under test and trial pressure

• Strong C++ experience in embedded or real-time systems
• Background in guidance, navigation and control, tracking, or estimation
• Experience with high dynamic autonomous or weapon systems
• Understanding of control laws and dynamic stability
• Experience working with real sensor data rather than purely simulated environments
• Familiarity with modelling or simulation environments desirable
• Knowledge of vision-based navigation or target tracking beneficial
• Degree in Aerospace Engineering, Control Systems, Robotics, Physics, Mathematics or similar
• Eligibility to work on defence related programmes in the UK (SC Cleared / 5 years residency in the UK)