Senior Missile Guidance and Control Engineer

nou Systems, Inc. (nSI) is now officially a 100% ESOP company! We value teamwork and collaboration, and this transition allows us to take that commitment to a new level. nSI empowers our customers by supplying products, services, and expertise with powerful, data driven insights that transform defense systems and improve capabilities.

nou Systems, Inc. (nSI) is here to build systems that solve our nation's most challenging defense problems in an enjoyable, stimulating environment. We're looking for talented builders with high levels of curiosity and extremely strong grounding in fundamentals and engineering first principles. If you're hungry for harder problems, used to working quickly, and excited to take innovative systems from napkin to the field, this is your happy place. 

We are pleased to announce the opening for a Senior Guidance & Control Engineer who will join our elite R&D team in Huntsville, Alabama building transformative low cost interceptors for emerging DoD applications. nSI is known for fielding revolutionary missile defense systems, pioneering step changes in RF seeker technology, introducing principled AI systems, and rapidly pioneering novel defense platforms, from space to the seabed.  We're small and agile, and ready to disrupt the status quo. 

Responsibilities:

Our small team has developed a game-changing interferometric RF seeker technology which has significant implications for making low-complexity, low-cost, high-performance interceptors for combating raids of asymmetric threats. Our seeker approach is patented, tested, funded by multiple customers, and in high demand for emerging threats. 

You will be an integral part of a team developing a best-in-class interceptor around this seeker as our guidance and control lead. Starting from your knowledge of both first principles and practical deployment challenges, you'll architect, rapidly prototype, and implement the guidance system for highly maneuverable, small diameter (120 mm and lower) surface-to-air interceptor designs. You will shape the optimal interceptor trajectories, inform airframe and actuator design/selection, define the homing loop from launch to endgame, and develop integrated guidance solutions that push the boundaries of what's achievable at low-cost in contested environments against stressing threats. Your work will span the full guidance loop - from seeker/sensor integration through mid-course guidance to endgame management. Autopilots, actuators, aiming, and adjoint analysis should be your bread and butter. 

You'll interface directly with aerodynamics, manufacturing, and control experts to ensure your guidance solutions exploit our seeker to the fullest. This includes developing adaptive guidance schemes that account for changing vehicle dynamics throughout the flight envelope and designing robust solutions that maintain performance across dispersed environments, countermeasures, and target sets.

As part of our small, elite team, you'll take guidance concepts from whiteboard sketches to hardware-in-the-loop simulations to flight tests in months, not years. 

Basic Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

• Master's degree minimum in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or similar technical field
• Seven years of full-time professional experience in guidance, navigation, and control engineering roles
• Must possess or have the ability to obtain an active Secret Security Clearance

Technical Competencies - You must demonstrate expertise in:

• Modern guidance law development including proportional navigation variants, optimal guidance, predictive guidance, and sliding mode approaches
• 6-DoF trajectory analysis and Monte Carlo simulation
• State estimation and filtering for guidance applications (e.g. EKF, UKF, particle filters)
• Hardware-in-the-loop and processor-in-the-loop simulation environments
• Real-time implementation of guidance algorithms with computational constraints
• Impact of guidance techniques on platform cost, other subsytems, and integration/manufacturing complexity

Core Technical Skills:

• Deep understanding of engagement kinematics, zero-effort-miss dynamics, and time-to-go estimation
• Sufficient technical expertise to understand the impact of fuzing, warhead choice, seeker selection and performance, actuator performance, processing power, threat behavior, and countermeasures on guidance techniques
• Proficiency in rapid prototyping of guidance algorithms from concept through flight test
• Demonstrated ability to develop guidance solutions from first princi