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

About the Role

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.

Key Responsibilities

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

Behaviours

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

Qualifications and Experience

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)