Intelligent Systems Engineer

MBDA
The Opportunity

Applications are invited for an Intelligent Autonomous (IAS) Systems engineer within the Guidance, Control and Navigation (GCN) Function at MBDA UK Ltd. MBDA is the first truly integrated, multi-national defence company in Europe, enabling the development of missile and weapon systems for each branch of the armed forces: air, sea and land. MBDA’s range of technologies and products consolidates the Group as a world-leader in the defence industry.
A successful candidate will work within a team of intelligent systems, autonomous systems and command and control (C2) engineers to develop and evaluate state-of-the-art algorithms spanning a range of domains from on-board autonomous decision making to off-board C2 algorithms. The work will involve researching, developing, testing, evaluating and implementing algorithms that integrate into wider complex weapon systems through both funded internal research & development and fast-moving, challenging projects.
As an IAS engineer you will be expected to collaborate both within the function and the wider MBDA community, offering significant opportunities to be actively involved in a wide variety of projects and tasks. You will develop algorithms that are central to the design of MBDA’s complex guided weapon systems products. These algorithms are developed at many stages of the lifecycle of the product including:

• Research studies, both externally and internally funded, to investigate algorithms for future developments
• Algorithms to support: initial missile feasibility and concept studies; assessment and development programmes; and mid-life updates for in in-service products.
  
  What we are looking for from you?
• Preferably PhD qualified in related area
• A good level degree with strong mathematical content and programming skills e.g. Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Information Engineering.
• A keen interest in cutting-edge technologies.
• Relevant experience, Post-Doctoral or Industrial, in robotics, autonomous decision making, data fusion, tracking/estimation, pattern discovery & recognition, statistical inference, optimisation and machine/deep learning algorithms. Real-time implementation, and/or validation & verification is a strong advantage.
• Applications from candidates who are in the process of completing their PhD are also welcome.

As an IAS engineer you will be expected to cultivate a broad and in-depth knowledge across a variety of applicable fields and topics. However specific knowledge or experience in any of these areas is of benefit:

• Robotics, guidance and autonomous decision making, e.g.
  • Routing and motion/trajectory planning, optimisation, co-ordinated guidance and control, decision theory, MDPs/POMDPs, expert systems, game theory, decision support systems, multi-agent systems
• Data fusion and state estimation/tracking algorithms e.g.
  • Kalman Filtering, multiple-model tracking methods, particle filters, grid-based estimation methods, Multi-Object-Multi-Sensor Fusion, data-association, random finite sets, Bayesian belief networks, Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence
• Machine Learning for regression and pattern recognition/discovery problems e.g.
  • Gaussian processes, latent variable methods, support vector machines, probabilistic/statistical models, neural networks, Bayesian inference, random-forests, novelty detection, clustering
• Deep Learning e.g.
  • Deep reinforcement learning, Monte-Carlo tree search, deep regression/classification, deep embeddings, recurrent Networks, natural language processing
• Computer Vision algorithms e.g.
  • Structure from motion, image Based navigation, SLAM, pose estimation/recovery,

Ideally you will have some knowledge and experience in:

• Matlab, Simulink and/or Stateflow
• Python including PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenAI-Gym/Universe
• Model Based Design

In addition you will:

• be autonomous, pro-active and capable of working on your own initiative with a minimum of supervision, as well as within an algorithm development team working transversally across MBDA
• have an understanding of and an ability to work within defined processes
• have the ability to visualize and analyse complex systems
• have good verbal, presentation and written communication skills
• have practical knowledge of basic systems engineering principles and processes
• be able to work with engineering teams, including in-house and contractor personnel

The Specific Role

• You will be responsible for technical development of specific algorithms or studies for key programmes within MBDA.
• Responsibilities can include concept studies, algorithm design and trade-off studies, trials preparation, trials analysis and reporting, architecture definition, algorithm and model validation.
• You will perform technical analyses and investigations into a full range of issues and problems and prepare and develop solutions either individually or as a member of a project team.
• You will engage with the algorithm users, understand and respond to their needs and ensure that the algorithms are fit for purpose.

What’s great about this opportunity?

• You will gain in-depth knowledge of the design and functionality of MBDA’s complex weapon systems through your algorithm development work. You will additionally gain insight into a number of related disciplines e.g. Simulation and Modelling, Software, Hardware-in-the Loop, Systems Design & Validation, Seekers & Sensors, Datalinks and Technical Quality.
• You will have the opportunity to work within an international discipline in MBDA.
• You will be exposed to cutting-edge technological innovations.
• You will play a key role in the development of our complex weapon systems.
• You will have the opportunity to develop your career as a technology specialist, or as a functional/project manager.