As a fully owned subsidiary of Safran Electronics & Defense, Safran Electronics & Defense Australasia Pty Ltd (SEDA) delivers and supports various products including high-performance optronics and inertial navigation equipment.
SEDA is experiencing strong growth and is seeking an experienced Guidance, Navigation, and Control Engineer (GNC) responsible for the design, development, integration, verification, and optimisation of guidance, navigation, and control functions for optronic gimbal products and terminal guidance solutions.
Reporting to the Head of Engineering, this role focuses online-of-sight stabilisation, target tracking, pointing performance, inertial sensing, servo control systems, control loop implementation, and structural interaction analysis. The GNC Engineer collaborates closely with mechanical, optical, software, electronics, systems, and test engineers to deliver high-performance electro-optical and infrared sensor solutions.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Key Responsibilities
- Develop control architectures for gimbals and optronic sensors from concept through to qualification.
- Design, implement, and tune line-of-sight (LOS) stabilization and target-tracking control loops.
- Develop guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for seeker operation.
- Model and analyze gimbal dynamics, servo systems, and control-structure interactions.
- Define performance budgets for pointing accuracy, tracking accuracy, jitter, and stabilization effectiveness.
- Integrate inertial sensors, encoders, resolvers, and actuator systems into seeker control solutions.
- Support boresighting, calibration, and performance characterization of seeker systems.
- Develop simulation environments to assess seeker and gimbal performance.
- Perform stability, frequency-domain, and time-domain analyses.
- Support the integration of infrared (IR) and EO/TV sensor channels with tracking and control systems.
- Participate in system verification, qualification testing, and flight-test campaigns.
- Develop detailed requirements, specifications, interface definitions, and verification plans.
- Conduct technical trade studies and risk assessments to guide design decisions.
- Support the transition to production and ongoing product improvement initiatives.
Technical Skill Requirements
The GNC Engineer should have demonstrated experience in many of the following areas:
- Line-of-sight stabilization and target tracking
- Servo control system design and optimization
- Guidance, navigation, and control algorithm development
- Gimbal dynamics and control-structure interaction
- Pointing, tracking, and jitter error budget management
- Sensor fusion and inertial measurement integration
- Technical authority for seeker/gimbal performance
- Classical and modern control theory (PID, state-space, advanced methods)
- Frequency-domain analysis
- Motion control architectures
- Inertial navigation integration
