Systems Engineer - Mission Performance

About the role

We're building safety-enhancing technology for aviation that will save lives. Automated aviation systems will enable a future where air transportation is safer, more convenient and fundamentally transformative to the way goods — and eventually people — move around the planet. We are a team of mission-driven engineers with experience across aerospace, robotics and self-driving cars working to make this future a reality.

As a Mission Performance Analyst at Reliable Robotics, you will be a part of the System Development team, which architects the future of autonomous flight. This role bridges first-principles physics and the deterministic constraints required to keep self-flying aircraft safe under any conditions. You will define the boundaries of what our aircraft can achieve, ensuring our automated systems operate with precision in normal, extreme, and degraded conditions.

As part of an experienced multi-disciplinary team, you will translate complex aerodynamics and fluid dynamics into quantified performance baselines that drive automation requirements and become the safety standards that define our success. You will collaborate with members from other groups within Reliable Robotics to develop the new and novel systems necessary for uncrewed aircraft operations.

Responsibilities

- In your role as a Mission Performance Analyst you will contribute to the development of prototypes and certifiable, safety-critical flight systems in a dynamic, high-growth environment

- Establish safe, quantified operational thresholds by leveraging existing simulations (e.g., from GNC); where gaps exist, build basic first-principles models independently or articulate the analytical input needed from other teams

- Partner with Autopilot and GNC teams to analyze flight control limits and ensure robust, resilient performance during mode transitions and edge-case scenarios

- Determine the environmental thresholds (crosswinds, icing, link latencies) that dictate how our systems navigate behavioral state transitions

- Define representative, high-stakes mission scenarios that demonstrate physical system resilience and safe automated responses under compounding failure conditions

- Provide the quantitative physical foundations that enable safety engineering teams to conduct rigorous hazard assessments

- Ingest and analyze real-world flight databases and telemetry logs using Python, MATLAB, or SQL to extract insights into operating behaviors and establish flight performance baselines

- Quantify procedural thresholds for Flight Manual Supplements, accounting for atmosphere, terrain, and payload variability

Basic Success Criteria

- Master’s degree in Science or Engineering (or a Bachelor’s degree with at least 10 years of experience) in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical discipline

- Broad experience from 5+ years in aircraft performance analysis, flight sciences, flight dynamics, or aerospace systems engineering