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)