Flight Performance Engineer

Flight Performance Engineer

📍 Bristol Area | Hybrid Working (Minimum 3 Days Onsite)

🛡️ Defence & Aerospace Sector

📋 Permanent | Full-Time

Are you passionate about aircraft performance, flight dynamics, and UAV technology? Do you want to play a key role in the development of cutting-edge fixed-wing unmanned aircraft that are supporting critical defence and security missions across the globe?

We're partnering with an innovative aerospace and defence organisation at the forefront of autonomous aviation, seeking a Flight Performance Engineer to help shape the next generation of UAV capability.

This is an opportunity to work on highly advanced airborne platforms, combining flight test data, simulation, aerodynamics, propulsion and mission analysis to drive real-world aircraft performance improvements.

The Opportunity:

As a Flight Performance Engineer, you'll be responsible for characterising, modelling and validating the performance of fixed-wing UAV systems, ensuring that aircraft capabilities are understood, optimised and accurately represented throughout the design lifecycle.

Working closely with multidisciplinary engineering teams, you'll influence key design decisions while supporting mission planning, flight testing and future platform development.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain aircraft performance models and predictive analysis tools
• Define and assess flight envelopes considering stability, control authority and structural limitations
• Conduct trade studies to evaluate and optimise aircraft performance characteristics
• Design flight test plans and analyse telemetry data to validate aircraft behaviour and performance
• Build and refine 6-DOF and point-mass simulation models to evaluate mission effectiveness across varying operating environments
• Support the assessment of autopilot performance and flight control tuning alongside avionics and GNC specialists
• Identify performance limitations and recommend technical improvements
• Produce technical documentation to support certification activities, customer proposals and operational publications
• Collaborate closely with aerodynamics, structures, avionics and systems engineering teams throughout the programme lifecycle

What We're Looking For:

We're interested in speaking with engineers who combine strong analytical capability with practical aircraft and flight test knowledge.

Essential Experience

✅ Degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline

✅ Minimum 3 years' experience in aircraft performance, flight mechanics or flight dynamics engineering

✅ Strong understanding of fixed-wing aircraft aerodynamics and performance analysis

✅ Experience working with 6-DOF simulations such as:

• MATLAB/Simulink
• JSBSim
• Custom simulation environments

✅ Flight test data analysis experience, including telemetry and sensor-derived datasets

✅ Proficiency with Python, MATLAB or similar analytical tools

✅ Ability to translate performance analysis into design recommendations and engineering decisions

Highly Desirable

• UAV or autonomous aircraft experience
• Familiarity with autopilot systems and flight control architectures
• Weight & Balance and Centre of Gravity management experience
• Exposure to aircraft certification and airworthiness standards
• Experience operating within defence, aerospace or highly regulated engineering environments

Security Requirements

Due to the nature of the work, applicants must be:

• Eligible to obtain UK SC Security Clearance
• Willing to undergo the necessary vetting process

Travel

There will be occasional opportunities to travel within the UK and internationally to support testing, customer engagement and programme activities.