Flight Controls Engineer

Reports to: Director, Aircraft Systems

Type: Full-Time

The Role

Dominion Scout is Canada's first autonomous collaborative platform (ACP) — a clean-sheet, sovereign aircraft designed autonomy-first, built to fly alongside fighter jets and operate in Arctic conditions no allied program is designing for. There is no pilot onboard to catch what the control system misses, so the control laws have to hold across the full envelope, through component failures, and in weather a simulator only approximates.

You design and tune Scout's flight control laws, from the dynamic model through to flight test. You turn mission requirements into GNC requirements, prove the design in simulation and on the rig, and close the loop with telemetry from real flights — working alongside the autonomy, simulation, test, and manufacturing teams taking the aircraft from design to first metal to flight.

What You'll Do

• Design, model, and tune inner- and outer-loop control logic for fly-by-wire flight control systems across standard and dynamic flight regimes.

• Build high-fidelity dynamic aircraft models in MATLAB/Simulink for control synthesis, performance evaluation, and handling qualities analysis.

• Derive guidance, navigation, and control requirements from mission parameters, write the software and system requirements that follow, and drive the sizing and selection of actuators, sensors, and flight control hardware.

• Lead the mechanical sizing, installation, monitoring & maintenance integration onto the airplane

• Lead flight control testing across software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and real-time simulator testbeds, including fault injection and degraded-mode performance.

• Write flight test plans, support real-time monitoring during test, analyze telemetry, and recalibrate control parameters between flights.

What You Bring

• Experience designing and tuning flight control laws for fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that flew — crewed or uncrewed, not only in simulation.

• Strong grounding in classical and modern control theory, flight dynamics, and handling qualities.

• Fluency in MATLAB/Simulink for aircraft modeling, control design, and analysis.

• Hands-on SIL/HIL testing of flight control software, and comfort tracing a problem from telemetry back to the control law.

• Experience deriving and writing GNC requirements and working inside a systems engineering process.

• Working knowledge of safety analysis for flight-critical systems — FMEA, reliability, redundancy management.

Nice to Have

• Flight test experience: test cards, on-console monitoring, and post-flight parameter identification.

• Fly-by-wire redundancy architectures and fault-tolerant control.

• Control law work for high-performance or highly agile aircraft.

• Auto-code generation from Simulink to embedded flight software.

• Flight controls for uncrewed aircraft, or for cold-weather and icing conditions.

• Clean-sheet or demonstrator aircraft programs, or defence and dual-use air programs.

No defence background required.

We've hired people who didn't tick every box. If this is the work you want to do, please apply anyway.

Why Join Us

Building something meaningful starts with the right people.

At Dominion Dynamics, you’ll:

• Shape Canada’s future by building real defence capability for the CAF and our allies.

• Make decisions that ship in a high-trust environment with short feedback loops and rapid iteration.

• Move fast, field faster, and work directly with the operator — our systems are in the field with the CAF now.

• Have an impact from day one with equity, responsibility, and direct access to leadership.

If you’re curious, hands-on, and driven by the opportunity to make a difference, this is where you belong!

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary and company equity*

• Comprehensive health benefits

• Additional equity granted based on impact*

We use AI tools to support parts of the hiring process, including screening and reviewing responses. Final hiring decisions are always made by people and follow all applicable privacy and employment laws in Canada.

*Equity awarded to full time employees only.