Description
Position OverviewAs a Senior State Estimation Engineer, you will collaborate with peers to:
- Lead development of the state estimation stack. You will shape its architecture and roadmap, lead design reviews, and hold the bar on code quality
- Research, design and develop the systems required for handling degraded or denied GNSS signals, ensuring a reliable aircraft state estimate when satellite navigation is jammed, spoofed, or unavailable
- Own the sensor suite deployed on our aircraft: from selection, calibration, time synchronisation, and health monitoring, to research into what new sensors the aircraft should carry next
- Stay hands-on: write production C++, review the handwritten code, and prototype/compare various estimation and sensing approaches
- Deploy tools for analyzing and providing quality metrics of state estimates for downstream users, establishing what the estimator can provide and the extent to which its outputs can be trusted
- Represent the estimation team in design reviews with the navigation, controls, hardware, and flight-test teams
- Onboard and mentor junior engineers that join the team
Your key objectives will include:
- Designing and implementing estimators that output the aircraft's state (e.g. EKF, error-state KF, UKF, factor-graph methods), including INS mechanisation,GNSS/INS integration
- Developing vision-based navigation that limits drift on long flights without GNSS, such as visual-inertial odometry, image-to-map matching, and landmark and runway detection
- Fusing a wide range of sensors: IMUs, multi-antenna GNSS, magnetometers, air data, barometric, radar and laser altimeters, cameras, and LiDAR
- Estimating wind, air data, and height above terrain accurately enough to support automatic takeoff, approach, flare, and landing
- Building fault detection and integrity monitoring into the estimator (e.g. innovation gating, cross-checks, jamming and spoofing detection, protection levels)
- Writing production C++ that runs in real time on the aircraft, tested against recorded flight logs, simulation, HIL, and flight
Other Details:
- No. of Positions: 1
- Duration: Permanent Full-Time, starting December 2026
- Base Compensation: 153920 to 168480
- This is a hybrid role involving remote work and on-site presence to support field tests-you must be in the Greater Toronto Area or willing to relocate
- Competitive and comprehensive compensation (e.g. 3 weeks of vacation upon joining, comprehensive health and wellness plans)
- You must be eligible to hold a Government of Canada security clearance at the Reliability or Secret level, and pass security assessment for the Controlled Goods Program
QualificationsAs the ideal candidate, you meet the following requirements:
- A university degree in aerospace, electrical, mechanical, or software engineering, computer science, robotics, or a related field
- Experience developing state estimation or navigation software that has run on real hardware
- Modern C++ on Linux with Eigen, and estimation or vision libraries (e.g. GTSAM, Ceres, OpenCV)
- A strong foundation in probabilistic estimation: recursive and batch estimation techniques (linear/nonlinear Kalman filters and their variants), factor graphs, optimisation techniques, observability analysis, and covariance tuning
- Experience with inertial navigation systems and GNSS/INS integration, including IMU error modelling, attitude representations, and coordinate frames
- Experience developing state estimation/localization approaches without GNSS using alternative sensors, particularly vision (e.g. visual odometry, VIO, visual SLAM, map matching)
- Experience integrating and calibrating various sensors (e.g. intrinsics and extrinsic sensor calibration, time synchronisation, etc.)
- Python or MATLAB for analysis, filter tuning, and flight-log post-processing
Preferred and bonus qualifications include experience with:
- Developing and/or flight-testing autonomous aircraft or drones in a professional setting
- Aircraft-specific sensing modalities: air data, angle of attack and sideslip, wind estimation, and radar or laser altimetry
- Alternate methods for localizing/navigating without GNSS: terrain-referenced navigation, LiDAR localisation, or signals of opportunity
- Integrity monitoring (e.g. RAIM, protection levels) and detecting GNSS jamming and spoofing
- Commercial GNSS/INS units (e.g. NovAtel SPAN, VectorNav, SBG), or running vision on embedded or GPU hardware
- Safety-critical standards and processes (e.g. DO-178C, MISRA C++, static analysis)
You also possess the soft skills to work in a high-stakes, tight-knit company, such as:
- Openness to give and receive feedback
- Adaptability when priorities move
- Self-awareness about your own strengths and gaps
- Taking initiative with minimal guidance
Compensation
$153,920.00 - $168,480.00 per year
