---
title: 'Lead Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer at wardstone.space'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-guidance-navigation-and-controls-engineer-wardstone-space-el-segundo-af4nyczss525'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-01'
---

# Lead Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer at wardstone.space

- **Company:** wardstone.space
- **Location:** El Segundo, CA
- **Compensation:** $180k–$240k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-01
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/wardstone-space/am9icG9zdDp3OL-JbSySOu7K3hz0kAXK

## Job description

## Overview

You will own Wardstone’s guidance, navigation, and control stack, including the algorithms, simulations, and flight software that make our interceptors hit their targets.

You’ll make the core architecture decisions, including the guidance laws, the estimation approach, and the actuation strategy. You’ll set the controllability requirements that shape the vehicle. You’ll work directly with the founders and with the seeker, propulsion, mechanical, and avionics engineers. You’ll take GNC from simulation through hardware-in-the-loop testing to live intercepts.

## What You’ll Do

Lead the GNC team

- Lead, mentor, and grow the GNC team, including hiring, setting priorities, and reviewing designs and code.
- Own the GNC architecture and roadmap, and give clear tradeoffs to founders and other teams.
- Set the team’s standards for simulation, verification, flight software quality, and analysis documentation. Develop guidance
- Design guidance laws for midcourse and terminal homing under high-speed, nonlinear dynamics, such as proportional navigation and its variants, or optimal control methods.
- Develop intercept prediction algorithms from seeker tracks and onboard state estimates. Design flight control
- Lead the actuation architecture trade, such as the vehicle ADB, aerodynamic control surfaces, thrust vectoring, or divert thrusters.
- Design and tune robust control loops for high-G, high-rate maneuvers.
- Model actuator bandwidth, latency, saturation, and uncertainty. Own navigation and estimation
- Own the navigation filter and target-state estimator (EKF/UKF), fusing seeker tracks with IMU, GPS, and onboard timing.
- Work with the seeker team to define the seeker-to-guidance interface. Make sure estimation stays reliable under noise, latency, jitter, and thermal effects. Build simulation and analysis
- Build and maintain high-fidelity 6DOF simulations, including supersonic aerodynamics, propulsion events, actuator dynamics, and seeker models.
- Run Monte Carlo and worst-case analyses to drive vehicle design decisions. Test and fly
- Deliver GNC flight software that meets hard real-time constraints, working with avionics and embedded engineers.
- Lead hardware-in-the-loop testing with real sensors and scene generators.
- Lead GNC through ground and flight tests, including tuning, data collection, and post-flight analysis. Shape the vehicle
- Set controllability requirements that shape the airframe, control surfaces, and propulsion.
- Work with propulsion on control authority and impulse timing.

Required Qualifications

- B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field. M.S. or Ph.D. preferred.
- 5+ years of GNC experience, including algorithms that have flown on real hardware.
- Experience leading engineers or owning a major GNC subsystem from design through flight test.
- Deep understanding of classical and modern control theory.
- Strong background in guidance, state estimation, and nonlinear dynamics.
- Experience building 6DOF flight simulations (MATLAB, Simulink, Python, or C++).
- Hands-on experience tuning controllers for missiles, rockets, UAVs, or other autonomous flight systems.
- Fluency with coordinate frames, quaternions, and navigation transformations.
- Must be a U.S. person as defined by ITAR (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual). [Must be eligible to obtain a U.S. security clearance.]

## Nice to Have

- Experience with missile guidance, interceptors, or hypersonic systems.
- Experience with optimal control (MPC, LQR variants, differential games).
- Experience with radar seeker integration or seeker-in-the-loop guidance.
- Experience with embedded real-time systems, RTOS, or high-rate control loops.
- Experience with flight qualification or MIL-STD environmental testing.
- Prior early-stage startup experience.

## About wardstone.space

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Wardstone builds a modular, low-cost interceptor platform for air and missile defense, designed to counter threats from Group 4 UAS to medium-range ballistic missiles.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; raised $5M)
- **Headquarters**: El Segundo, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Sebastian Fischer (CEO) and Tobias Fischer

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Aerospace & Defense, Missile Defense, Space-Based Interceptors
- **Target customers**: U.S. Department of Defense (Space Force, Missile Defense Agency, Air Force Research Labs), allied nations
- **Mission or purpose**: To out-produce, out-innovate, and out-perform adversaries by building a modular interceptor platform that can be mass-produced, rapidly adapted, and fielded at the pace of evolving threats.

## Products & Services
- **Hailstorm (Ground-Based Interceptor)**: A right-sized, modular surface-based interceptor demonstrated in the Mojave (Mach 2.5, 40,000 ft). Uses a large particle cloud (1 km diameter) to kinetically neutralize hypersonic and ballistic missiles, reducing cost and sensing requirements.
- **Space-Based Interceptor Constellation**: Satellites equipped with kinetic interceptors designed to counter hypersonic and ballistic missiles from orbit. Part of the “Golden Dome” concept.
- **Modular Platform Architecture**: Interchangeable components allow mission-specific configuration, rapid upgrades, and parallel production across multiple suppliers.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $5M seed round (raised from Nova Threshold, Liquid 2 Ventures, Bow Capital, B5 Capital, Allegis Capital)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (fall 2025 cohort), relationships with AFWERX, Space Systems Command, Air Force Research Labs, Navy Joint Special Operations Command
- **Growth Signals**: Accepted into Y Combinator; first prototype (Hailstorm-Ground) successfully flown; letters of support for a $3M SBIR grant; inbound requests for additional use cases; hiring multiple engineering roles.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Modularity**: Standardized, interchangeable components decouple production from single bottlenecks, enabling surge manufacturing and supply chain resilience.
- **Cost advantage**: Interceptors are designed to be “right-sized” to the threat, drastically reducing per-unit cost compared to traditional “exquisite” interceptors (e.g., THAAD, GMD).
- **Unique kill mechanism**: Large particle cloud increases probability of intercept without requiring precise hit-to-kill, reducing sensor and actuator costs.
- **Incremental path**: Starting with ground-based interceptors before scaling to space-based systems, allowing technology maturation and customer validation.

## Strategic Focus
- Near-term: Deliver ground-based interceptors to fill the “missing middle” threat band (Group 4 UAS to MRBMs) and secure SBIR/IRAD contracts.
- Medium-term: Deploy space-based interceptors as part of the U.S. “Golden Dome” missile defense architecture.
- Continuous improvement: Open architecture to integrate new technologies without redesigning the entire platform.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct impact on national security and countering hypersonic threats.
- **Early-stage startup**: Opportunity to shape the company’s technology and culture from the ground up.
- **Engineering focus**: Roles span mechanical, electrical, avionics, propulsion, GNC, simulation, and sensing.
- **Compensation & equity**: Competitive salaries ($100k–$160k for engineers) plus equity grants.
- **Location**: El Segundo, CA — a growing aerospace startup hub near LA Air Force Base and Space Force facilities.
- **Work environment**: Likely on-site/hybrid (El Segundo office); YC alumni culture with fast iteration and hands-on testing (e.g., Mojave flight tests).

## Sources
1. [wardstone.space](https://wardstone.space/)
2. [wardstone.space/careers](https://wardstone.space/careers)
3. [wardstone.space/ourstory](https://wardstone.space/ourstory)
4. [spacenews.com](https://spacenews.com/startup-bets-on-new-approach-to-space-based-missile-defense/)
5. [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wardstone)

## Other roles at wardstone.space

- [Lead Propulsion Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-propulsion-engineer-wardstone-space-el-segundo-5jj1zsqny87h) — El Segundo, CA
- [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-wardstone-space-el-segundo-weysaczpdk42) — El Segundo, CA
- [Avionics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/avionics-engineer-wardstone-space-el-segundo-hjfd9cjytfsy) — El Segundo, CA
- [MBA Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/mba-intern-wardstone-space-el-segundo-wk15p8cdft3h) — El Segundo, CA
- [Head of Manufacturing](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-manufacturing-wardstone-space-el-segundo-gwv1rsn8dzc6) — El Segundo, CA
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-manager-wardstone-space-el-segundo-mvxgw8kaqgbk) — El Segundo, CA
- [Operations and Logistics Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-and-logistics-associate-wardstone-space-el-segundo-cmpqg5jyxv5j) — El Segundo, CA
- [Mechanical Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-technician-wardstone-space-el-segundo-z5daq08jrxsw) — El Segundo, CA
- [Avionics Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/avionics-technician-wardstone-space-el-segundo-vcwqpsgege8z) — El Segundo, CA
- [Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-wardstone-space-el-segundo-qada746w7n4e) — El Segundo, CA