System Identification Engineer

Job description

About Us Harmattan AI is a next-generation defense prime building autonomous and scalable defense systems. Following the close of a $200M Series B, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, we are expanding our teams and capabilities to deliver mission-critical systems to allied forces. Our work is guided by clear values: building technologies with real-world impact, pursuing excellence in everything we do, setting ambitious goals, and taking on the hardest technical challenges. We operate in a demanding environment where rigor, ownership, and execution are expected. About the role Every airframe Harmattan AI flies starts with a model. System identification turns flight data into the verified dynamics that guidance and control are designed, tuned and trained on. It is the foundation of an autopilot that adapts across multirotors, fixed wings, VTOLs and missiles. As a System Identification Engineer, working out of Lausanne, you will own the path from flight test to identified model. You will design and run your own experiments, build a repeatable identification pipeline, and deliver models the G&C team can trust. Responsibilities Experiment Design & Flight Test: Plan and run your own identification tests, from excitation design to flight tests, including coordinating with the . Model Identification: Identify rigid-body, aerodynamic, propulsion and actuator dynamics using frequency and time-domain methods, including closed-loop identification on vehicles flown under a controller. Propulsion & Actuators: Characterize motors, ESCs, propellers and control surfaces, including bandwidth, delays, saturation, and thermal and battery effects. Identification Pipeline: Build and maintain an automated, reproducible pipeline from flight logs to identified model. This covers ingestion, data-quality checks, estimation, validation and reporting. Model Validation: Validate models against held-out flight data, quantify uncertainty, and make sure each model is fit for purpose: controller design, simulation, or training learned G&C. New Airframes: Extend the capability from multirotors to control-surface multirotors, fixed wings, tail-sitters and missiles. Simulation & G&C Support: Deliver models into simulation, SITL and HITL, and work closely with control, guidance and embedded engineers to close the loop between models and flight results. Mentorship: Depending on seniority, suppo…