Note: This role is not for Fomogo, but one of our clients, General Aeronautics
Role Overview
General Aeronautics is building advanced agricultural drone platforms focused on precision, reliability, and real-world scalability. We are at a high-growth stage where we are driving toward Product-Market Fit (PMF) and preparing to scale.We are looking for a Flight Control Lead to drive the development of our Flight Control System (FCS), autonomy stack, Ground Control Station (GCS) workflows, and mission management systems.This is a high-ownership role requiring deep technical capability, strong execution mindset, and the ability to build systems that are both innovative and operationally reliable, with a sharp focus on customer requirements and field usability. The role demands a leader who can move fast, solve ambiguous problems, and build flight autonomy that performs consistently in real farms and real conditions.
Key Responsibilities
Flight Control, Autonomy & Mission Management
- Lead architecture and development of Flight Control System (FCS), autonomy, and GCS-driven mission execution for agricultural drones.
- Own key autonomy capabilities including waypoint missions, path planning, geofencing, terrain following, precision mission execution, and fail-safe behaviors (RTL, hover, emergency landing).
- Drive end-to-end integration of mission management with flight controller systems, including spray control logic, flow-rate management, pump/nozzle control, and mission-linked execution.
- Ensure high standards of safety, reliability, robustness, and repeatability across real-world field operations.
Open Source Autopilot Ecosystem
- Drive development using open-source autopilot ecosystems such as PX4 / ArduPilot, MAVLink/MAVSDK, and GCS tools like QGroundControl / Mission Planner.
- Customize, extend, debug, and optimize autopilot firmware to meet product and operational requirements.
GNC & Control Engineering
- Apply strong fundamentals of Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) to improve flight stability and performance.
- Lead tuning and optimization of controllers under varying payload, wind, and environmental conditions, including improvements in sensor fusion, estimation, and filtering.
Customer-Centric Product Engineering
- Deeply understand customer workflows and translate requirements into flight system features and mission execution capabilities.
- Work closely with field operations, support teams, and product stakeholders to ensure solutions are practical, scalable, and easy to deploy.
- Use field data and customer feedback to continuously improve mission success rate, safety, uptime, and usability.
Innovation & Reliability Culture
- Drive innovation while maintaining disciplined engineering practices that ensure high operational reliability.
- Build robust testing, validation, and debugging frameworks including SITL/HIL workflows.
- Establish strong diagnostics, logging, and performance monitoring processes to improve fleet reliability and reduce turnaround time for fixes.
Execution Ownership & Team Leadership
- Take end-to-end ownership of flight autonomy deliverables from requirements to deployment and field validation.
- Mentor and guide engineers working on autonomy, embedded systems, GCS integration, and mission management.
- Drive best practices in design reviews, documentation, release management, and engineering quality.
- Collaborate with mechanical, electronics, cloud, and AI teams to deliver integrated product improvements.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- Bachelor's/Master's degree in Aerospace, Robotics, Mechanical, Electronics, Computer Science, or related field.
- 5+ years of experience in UAV flight control, autonomy, robotics, or related systems engineering.
- Strong experience in FCS design, autonomy development, and real-world UAV deployment.
- Strong knowledge of PX4 / ArduPilot architecture and ecosystem.
- Hands-on understanding of MAVLink communication, mission execution flows, and GCS integration.
- Strong programming skills in C/C++ (embedded/firmware) and Python (tools, scripting, analysis).
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across hardware-software integrated systems.
- Ability to drive flight testing, controller tuning, and root-cause analysis using logs and field data.
- Strong ownership mindset with ability to operate effectively in fast-paced and ambiguous environments.
Preferred Skills (Good to Have)
- Experience in agricultural drones, spraying drones, or industrial UAV applications.
- Familiarity with sensors and estimation systems (IMU, GNSS/RTK, magnetometer, barometer, lidar/radar altimeter).
- Experience with simulation environments such as SITL, Gazebo, jmavsim, etc.
- Knowledge of UAV safety engineering, fail-safe design, and reliability testing practices.
- Exposure to AI/ML-driven autonomy concepts and intelligent mission planning systems.
- Understanding of Kalman filtering and other state estimation algorithms.
- Strong mathematical background in linear algebra, calculus, and statistical methods.
- Proficient in C/C++ (particularly on Linux based systems and memory-constrained embedded processors) and Python.
Tools & Modern Engineering Mindset
- Comfortable using modern AI tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc. to accelerate engineering productivity.
- Ability to apply AI tools responsibly while ensuring correctness, safety, and validation discipline.
Key Attributes
- Strong passion for autonomy, GNC, and flight systems engineering.
- High-energy execution mindset with a strong bias toward shipping outcomes, not just ideas.
- Innovative mindset with a strong bias for reliability and field robustness.
- Customer-first approach with ability to understand real operational requirements.
- Strong communication skills and ability to lead cross-functional technical discussions.
- Collaborative and team-oriented leadership style.
- Ability to thrive in a PMF-stage environment with ambiguity, fast iteration cycles, and high ownership expectations.
What Success Looks Like
- Reliable flight performance across varying payloads and harsh agricultural environments.
- Autonomy features that improve safety, reduce pilot workload, and increase mission success.
- Strong mission management integration ensuring consistent precision spraying and repeatability.
- Scalable testing, diagnostics, and release frameworks enabling faster iteration cycles.
- High customer satisfaction driven by stable, user-friendly and dependable systems.
- Clear measurable improvements in field performance metrics such as uptime, mission completion rate, and incident reduction.
Why Join General Aeronautics
- Opportunity to build autonomy and flight systems that operate in challenging real-world conditions.
- High ownership role with direct impact on product performance and customer success.
- Fast-paced environment where strong engineers shape the roadmap and ship quickly.
- Work at the intersection of robotics, flight controls, mission execution, and real-world deployment.
