Navigation Engineer

Team: GNC

Location: Munich

Commitment: Full-time

Workplace Type: onsite

What you'll do

• Establish and own the navigation capability at Hypersonica, with a focus on robust, GNSS denied and degraded environment operation.
• Design and develop navigation algorithms using alternative instrumentation and sensor fusion to maintain accurate state estimation under extreme conditions.
• Explore and apply advanced estimation techniques, including ML aided approaches, where they materially improve robustness and performance.
• Build and own simulation and test frameworks to evaluate navigation performance across realistic disturbance, denial, and failure scenarios.
• Partner closely with guidance, control, avionics, and systems engineers to ensure navigation solutions are tightly integrated and flight ready.
• Lead Model in the Loop (MIL) and Software in the Loop (SIL) testing to validate navigation behaviour prior to integration and flight.
• Use ground test and flight data to refine models, close uncertainty, and drive rapid iteration.

Who you are

• A navigation or estimation engineer with 4+ years’ experience in aerospace, defence, or similarly demanding systems.
• Deeply comfortable working in GNSS-denied or degraded environments, and motivated by solving navigation where assumptions break.
• Strong grounding in state estimation and sensor fusion, with intuition for observability, uncertainty, and failure modes.
• Experienced applying or evaluating non-traditional navigation sources (e.g. optical, inertial, vision-based, or alternative sensors).
• Curious and pragmatic about ML-aided approaches, using them where they add real robustness rather than novelty.
• Someone who thinks in edge cases and adversarial conditions, not nominal performance.
• Comfortable taking end-to-end ownership of a technical capability, not just contributing algorithms.
• Energised by building something new, resilient, and flight-critical in a small team where navigation performance truly matters.

What we offer

• A mission driven environment with the opportunity to work on one of Europe’s most consequential defence challenges, with direct impact on sovereign capability and security.
• Daily collaboration with top experts across engineering, operations, and defence, with real opportunity to learn from the best, contribute, and grow.
• High ownership and autonomy; no time tracking, no micromanagement, just clear objectives and accountability for outcomes.
• A fast paced environment where good ideas are implemented quickly, and feedback from test and flight drives real decisions.
• A culture that values clarity, integrity, and excellence, and supports people who take initiative and push boundaries responsibly.
• Competitive compensation and real share options aligned to responsibility and impact, not tenure or hierarchy.