A³ by Airbus UAM Trajectory Planning and Optimization Engineer
Airbus believes in the potential of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) to transform our cities for the better. By pushing the limits of technology in the fields of connectivity, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and electric propulsion, our aim is to develop sustainable mobility systems that bring maximal societal benefit while causing minimal environmental impact. To this end, Airbus is harnessing its expertise across the company to develop solutions that will unlock the third dimension of urban mobility and offer viable alternatives to connect people.
As a Trajectory Planning and Optimization Engineer you will report directly to the Head of Flight Controls, Flight Software and Sub-scale and your role will be to design and implement safety critical flight software the generates flight plans and trajectories on the fly for our UAM vehicles. You will be involved in all stages of development – from architecting and implementing real-time flight software to validating software and models in simulation and on sub-scale and full-scale aircraft. You have designed, implemented and tested control systems and successfully deployed them in autonomous vehicles or robotics platforms. You are familiar with fixed-wing and rotorcraft flight dynamics, and with classical and modern control techniques.
You have a strong mathematical, analytical and software background. You are experienced in reduced order models for flight vehicles, motion planning including tree search and optimization based algorithms, and understand the pros and cons of each of these techniques. You also have experience developing software verification and validation tools, and with simulation based methods to assess probability of failures, such as Monte Carlo simulations. You have extensive experience with development and analysis tools in MATLAB and Simulink/Stateflow, and are a competent software engineer, experienced with application level software deployment, testing and debugging. You are experienced in C and C++ with a clear understanding of what happens on a hardware level. You have composed software systems with components developed in multiple languages. You can walk anyone in your organization through your systems’ code. You squash the bugs that perplex others. You have a passion for airplanes, robots or both!
As our projects are “out-of-the-box” by design, you will be expected to seek, investigate and implement creative solutions to challenges and impediments, and skillfully pivot when needed, with minimum loss of momentum. We expect you to do this with equal parts technical intuition and rigorous by-the-book protocol.
To get specific, your responsibilities will be to:
Design and implement safety critical real-time trajectory planning software for UAM aircraft
Develop software tools for trajectory analysis, verification and validation
Develop, implement and integrate simulation environments and other tools to test the reliability of the trajectory generation functions in realistic flight scenarios
Analyze simulation and flight test data, and propose improvements to the trajectory generation functions based on these results
Effectively communicate engineering intents with the rest of the engineering team
Make a lasting contribution to the social environment at A³ by participating in social events and proposing new ones, sharing your passions and hobbies, and spreading joy wherever you go
We expect you to have:
A Master’s or Doctorate degree in Aerospace, Mechanical, Robotics, Computer Science, or similar fields
At least five years of progressively ambitious experience in the area of trajectory optimization, motion planning and vehicle simulation
A strong mathematical and analytical background, specifically in linear algebra, dynamical systems and optimization
Hands on experience with numerical optimization, with application to trajectory optimization
Extensive knowledge of MATLAB, Simulink and associated workflows
Excellent communication skills
An aptitude for working in small teams, with the ability to take a leading role in your area(s) of specialty and readiness to work across disciplines where appropriate
Having one or more of the following is a plus:
Experience with C, C++ or another compiled/systems language and Python or another interpreted language
Experience with Git or another DVCS.
Familiarity with Agile methods, and related tools, e.g. JIRA, Bitbucket.
Experience with flight control system design for UAVs (fixed-wing, helicopter or multi-rotor)
Experience with chance-constrained optimal planning and decision making under uncertainty
Experience with flight software certification requirements
Familiarity with flight operations in the NAS and ATM/UTM systems
You are a team player who enjoys learning continuously. You know how to earn the trust of a team and you are accountable for your actions. We need you to be technology savvy and adaptable, so you can develop new solutions to support the nascent UAM organization. Ultimately, we need you to be able to convey the fun, excitement and fast pace of Airbus UAM.
