Principal Navigation Engineer

The Role

Mach Industries is seeking a Principal Navigation Engineer to lead the development, integration, and flight validation of navigation systems for autonomous aircraft and related defense platforms. You will own the technical architecture, performance, and maturation of navigation solutions across all mission phases while leading the execution and development of the Navigation team.

This is a hands-on engineering leadership role combining principal-level technical authority, team execution, and people management. You will define navigation architecture, solve challenging estimation and integration problems, establish engineering rigor, develop engineering talent, and ensure navigation capabilities meet program objectives from requirements development through flight test.

The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in state estimation, inertial navigation, sensor fusion, and navigation system integration with decisive technical leadership, sound engineering judgment, and effective people leadership. Success requires translating ambiguous mission needs into clear technical plans, balancing rigor with program speed, and fielding reliable navigation systems in challenging operating environments.

Key Responsibilities

Navigation Architecture and Technical Ownership

• Own the technical architecture, roadmap, execution, and delivery of navigation capabilities across requirements, design, implementation, verification, integration, and flight test.
• Translate mission objectives and vehicle concepts into navigation requirements, sensor specifications, interface definitions, performance budgets, verification criteria, engineering plans, and team deliverables.
• Design, analyze, and mature navigation algorithms, including inertial navigation, state estimation, sensor fusion, sensor calibration, alignment, integrity monitoring, and fault detection and isolation.
• Develop robust estimation solutions that account for sensor noise, bias, drift, timing errors, misalignment, environmental disturbances, vehicle dynamics, computational constraints, and modeling uncertainty.
• Establish rigorous methods for evaluating estimator observability, convergence, consistency, robustness, integrity, and degraded-mode behavior.
• Lead technical discussions and design reviews, ensuring architecture and algorithm decisions are supported by appropriate analysis, test evidence, and system-level reasoning.
• Identify technical deficiencies and risks, establish corrective-action and mitigation plans, and drive issues to resolution.
• Serve as the technical authority for navigation architecture, algorithm design, sensor selection, and significant technical trade studies.

Performance Analysis, Implementation, and Flight Validation

• Lead navigation performance analysis, uncertainty quantification, covariance analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, sensitivity studies, and error-budget development across nominal and off-nominal conditions.
• Develop and maintain navigation simulation models, sensor error models, and software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop verification workflows.
• Drive production implementation of navigation algorithms in embedded, real-time software, reviewing numerical stability, computational efficiency, coordinate conventions, timing, initialization, and fault-handling behavior.
• Define specific ground and flight test objectives, instrumentation requirements, success criteria, and requirements-based verification plans.
• Lead navigation data analysis, model correlation, performance assessment, anomaly investigation, and corrective-action validation.
• Ensure navigation algorithms and hardware are appropriately characterized and validated against system-level requirements throughout development and flight testing.

Sensor Selection, Hardware Architecture, and Make-versus-Buy Decisions

• Own the technical evaluation and selection of navigation sensors and related hardware, including IMUs, GNSS receivers, aiding sensors, and integrated navigation solutions.
• Define sensor performance requirements based on mission needs, system-level error budgets, environmental constraints, interfaces, and navigation architecture.
• Lead quantitative trade studies considering accuracy, noise, bias stability, bandwidth, latency, environmental robustness, size, weight, power, cost, availability, and integration complexity.
• Evaluate make-versus-buy decisions for navigation hardware, algorithms, and integrated solutions, considering performance, development effort, lifecycle cost, schedule, maintainability, supplier support, and strategic value.
• Assess supplier capabilities, component limitations, technology maturity, configuration control, and lifecycle risks to inform architecture and procurement decisions.
• Define sensor characterization, calibration, qualification, and acceptance-test requirements to demonstrate that selected hardware meets system-level objectives.
• Partner with Avionics, Electrical, Mechanical Engineering, Embedded Software, and Supply Chain teams to ensure successful hardware selection, integration, and lifecycle support.

Team Leadership and Development

• Lead and develop a small team of navigation engineers, initially managing approximately three direct reports.
• Establish clear responsibilities, priorities, individual objectives, deliverables, and performance expectations aligned with program milestones.
• Delegate meaningful technical ownership while maintaining accountability for team outcomes and navigation deliverables.
• Provide regular technical feedback, mentorship, coaching, and professional-development opportunities.
• Identify individual strengths and development areas, assigning responsibilities that build increasing engineering independence and technical depth.
• Proactively address performance issues, technical blockers, unclear ownership, and team inefficiencies.
• Recognize when specialized expertise is required and engage the appropriate subject-matter experts.
• Foster a culture of technical rigor, accountability, collaboration, constructive challenge, and continuous improvement.

Engineering Judgment and Program Execution

• Independently identify and prioritize the highest-value engineering activities based on program objectives, technical risk, schedule, and available resources.
• Develop clear technical recommendations for ambiguous problems, evaluating alternatives, trade-offs, consequences, and residual risks.
• Make timely engineering and execution decisions within delegated authority without unnecessary reliance on GNC leadership.
• Exercise sound judgment in determining when additional analysis, algorithm complexity, hardware capability, or engineering effort provides meaningful value.
• Challenge assumptions, requirements, and proposed approaches when supported by sound engineering reasoning.
• Balance technical performance, reliability, architectural complexity, development cost, schedule, and program risk.
• Communicate significant decisions with a clear recommendation, supporting evidence, alternatives considered, and associated risks.
• Take ownership of technical and team outcomes rather than only coordinating or executing direction established by others.

Cross-Functional Leadership and Team Effectiveness

• Serve as the primary navigation partner to Guidance, Controls, Avionics, Embedded Software, Aerodynamics, Mechanical Engineering, Test, and program leadership.
• Coordinate navigation requirements, interfaces, integration activities, dependencies, and cross-functional deliverables.
• Contribute to system-level trade studies and concepts of operations, identifying navigation requirements, performance limitations, uncertainty impacts, and integration risks.
• Build effective working relationships across disciplines and independently resolve organizational and technical coordination challenges.
• Communicate team progress, technical risks, resource needs, schedule impacts, and mitigation plans clearly to engineering leadership and stakeholders.
• Establish reusable estimation methods, analysis tools, engineering standards, and development processes that improve quality and execution speed.
• Allocate engineering resources to work that materially improves system performance, reliability, risk reduction, or program execution.
• Develop team capabilities that reduce dependence on individual engineers and improve organizational resilience.

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, robotics, mathematics, physics, or a related technical field.
• Significant experience developing, implementing, and testing navigation or state-estimation systems for aircraft, missiles, launch vehicles, spacecraft, high-performance UAVs, robotics, or comparable autonomous systems, typically gained through 10 or more years of relevant work.
• Demonstrated ownership of navigation systems through multiple development phases, including requirements, architecture, algorithm development, implementation, verification, integration, and flight test.
• Deep understanding of inertial navigation, state estimation, Kalman filtering, sensor fusion, stochastic processes, observability, and navigation error propagation.
• Strong knowledge of navigation sensors, including IMUs, GNSS receivers, magnetometers, barometers, and other aiding sensors.
• Experience designing and evaluating estimation algorithms under realistic sensor errors, vehicle dynamics, computational constraints, and timing limitations.
• Experience with Monte Carlo analysis, uncertainty quantification, covariance analysis, requirements-based verification, and SIL/HIL environments.
• Strong understanding of navigation system calibration, alignment, integration, and validation using ground- or flight-test data.
• Proficiency with MATLAB/Simulink or Python for modeling, simulation, algorithm development, and performance analysis.
• Experience with C or modern C++ for production or embedded implementations.
• Fluency with modern engineering workflows, including Git, code review, continuous integration, issue tracking, requirements traceability, and configuration management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical decisions, organize team execution, coordinate multidisciplinary activities, and drive deliverables to completion.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, provide constructive feedback, develop engineering talent, and address performance or execution issues.
• Strong communication skills, engineering judgment, initiative, and accountability.

Preferred Qualifications 

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, controls, robotics, or a related field.
• Experience fielding navigation systems for autonomous fixed-wing aircraft, missiles, or high-performance unmanned systems.
• Experience formally leading a small engineering team, managing direct reports, or owning multidisciplinary technical execution.
• Expertise in advanced estimation techniques, including extended and unscented Kalman filtering, nonlinear filtering, smoothing, factor graphs, or optimization-based estimation.
• Experience with GNSS-denied or GNSS-degraded navigation, including visual, terrain-relative, radar-aided, or other alternative navigation methods.
• Experience with high-dynamic inertial navigation, strapdown mechanization, attitude estimation, and coordinate-frame transformations.
• Knowledge of navigation sensor selection, characterization, calibration, environmental qualification, and make-versus-buy evaluation.
• Experience with estimator integrity monitoring, fault detection and isolation, measurement rejection, and navigation performance monitoring.
• Familiarity with integrated guidance, navigation, and control architectures and the effects of navigation uncertainty on closed-loop vehicle performance.
• Demonstrated ability to establish technical standards, improve engineering processes, allocate resources, and influence system-level decisions across multidisciplinary teams.