Principal Flight Control Verification Engineer

Our Mission

At Vertical Aerospace, we are pioneering the way for electric aviation. The VX4, our eVTOL (electric, vertical, take-off and landing), 'zero emissions' aircraft will set a new safety standard for how we will navigate the sky.

We won't realise our mission following the same legacy processes and traditions our predecessors followed; instead, we want to 'redefine' aerospace best practices.

We are growing quickly from a prototype business to a scaling SME, and the next few years will be critical to our success and delivering on our ambitious goals of having the VX4 in service by 2030.

What to Expect

As a Flight Control Systems Verification Lead, you will join our Flight Control Systems Department as the verification lead for our integrated flight control solutions. Your expertise will be pivotal in ensuring our flight control systems meet the highest standards of safety and performance through rigorous verification and validation processes.

A typical day could involve leading integration meetings with flight control computer architects, developing automated test campaigns for control law validation, or collaborating with simulation teams to ensure our verification assets support our comprehensive verification strategy. You'll work closely with suppliers to leverage test credit while maintaining alignment with ARP4754B requirements.

Your ability to coordinate across multi-disciplinary teams, drive systematic verification processes, and represent the department in senior leadership meetings will be key to your success in this role. This position offers a clear development path towards Principal Engineer for the right candidate.

What You'll Do

• Lead the integration of verification needs across all Flight Control stakeholders, including flight control computer, control law, and actuation system architects, into a unified and compliant verification plan.

• Own the test and simulation verification streams end-to-end, collaborating closely with simulation, modelling, and test teams to ensure all required assets support the verification strategy.

• Guarantee all system requirements are fully verifiable and traced through the verification process.

• Drive the development and execution of an automated test campaign, ensuring efficiency from test case definition to results capture, reporting and analysis.

• Oversee unintended behaviour and robustness testing while ensuring residual common mode development error risks are minimized as far as practical.

• Establish and maintain verification alignment with suppliers, particularly where supplier test credit is leveraged.

• Lead comprehensive coverage analysis to ensure traceability and completeness of requirement verification.

• Manage change impact assessments and regression strategies throughout the verification campaigns for each iteration of the system.

What You'll Bring

• Proven experience in flight control systems engineering and verification, ideally in a regulated aerospace environment.

• Demonstrated expertise in ARP4754B application and model-based systems engineering.

• Advanced proficiency in test systems architecture, simulation frameworks, and automated test pipelines.

• Strong understanding of control law validation and flight control system integration.

• Ability to coordinate across multi-disciplinary teams and influence stakeholders.

• Experience with supplier interface management in a verification context is highly desirable.

• Leadership, accountability and responsibility traits as this is a key non-hierarchical leadership position which requires a high degree of independence.

• Ability to represent the department in key meetings with senior leadership and act on its behalf.

• Systematic thinker with strong problem-solving and analytical skills.

• Passion for rigorous systems verification and continuous improvement.

What can you expect from us?

We're on a mission. Where others see limits, we see opportunity, and we work at pace. Working at Vertical isn't your average role but for those seeking a challenge, a flexible, supportive organisation and an incredible team; working here is an opportunity to do the best work of your career.

Our approach promotes ingenuity and courage, while our environment builds success through diligence in safety and being open in the way we work. The only way we're going to assure the next chapter of aviation history is by working as a team, relentlessly, towards our goal. 

Our benefits

Our people matter - we're not going anywhere without them. Which is why our company benefits go beyond the essentials.

• 26 days holiday, plus bank holiday

• 5 extra days per year to buy (or sell)

• 5 extra days holiday when you get married or enter a civil partnership

• Additional 4% of your salary to spend on extra benefits

• Award-winning digital health and wellbeing service (Help@Hand)

• Company performance based bonus - rewarding company and individual performance

• Company Share Scheme - open to every Vertical employee

• Company Pension Scheme - 5% and we match it

• Breakfast on us, every day

We may just be the hardest job you've ever had, but we're confident it will be the most rewarding. Join the team today and help us shape the future of Advanced Air Mobility.

Disclaimer Statement

We encourage you to apply even if you may not have all the experience listed in the advert. We recognise that talent comes in various forms and we are committed to providing opportunities that create an environment of growth, diversity, and inclusion for everyone. As part of our desire to review and make our processes fair, we may ask you questions related to these aspects during the application process. For more information on how we will use your data, see our Legal section.