VMS (Vehicle Management System) Engineer

Location: [Ottawa Office / Montreal or Toronto — considered], On-Site

Reports to: Director of Aircraft Systems

Type: Full-Time

The Role

You own the architecture that sits between what the mission autonomy software decides to do and what the vehicle actually does about it. The VMS is the central nervous system translating high-level autonomy commands into safe, executable vehicle control — if that translation is wrong, nothing downstream matters. You design and validate that architecture end to end: the ICDs that let autonomy and the flight management system talk to each other safely, the FDIR logic that keeps the vehicle flying when a sensor or actuator doesn't, and the hardware integration — FCCs, INS/GPS, actuators, power distribution — that all of it runs on.

You're not writing this in isolation from the hardware. You manage the suppliers building the flight-critical GNC and avionics hardware, run it through HIL and bench testing before it ever sees a vehicle, and you're in the loop lab or on the flight line when it's time to reduce telemetry data to find out if the vehicle behaves the way the ICD said it would.

What You'll Do

• Design, integrate, and validate the central VMS and flight computer architecture — the control bridge between mission-level autonomy and base-level vehicle control.

• Define and implement ICDs that let the flight management system/autopilot safely accept, translate, and execute dynamic commands from mission autonomy software.

• Run the full integration lifecycle for flight-critical avionics and GNC hardware — FCCs, INS/GPS, actuators, and power distribution units.

• Drive supplier technical management for flight-critical GNC and avionics hardware, from spec definition and vendor selection through qualification testing and acceptance.

• Architect fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) logic and fail-safe behavior across central flight processing hardware and distributed actuators.

• Lead HIL integration, subsystem bench testing, and ground/flight test troubleshooting of central VMS components.

What You Bring

• Experience architecting or integrating a Vehicle Management System or central flight computer that bridges autonomy and vehicle-level control.

• Hands-on ICD development — defining interfaces precise enough for a flight management system.

• Experience integrating flight-critical avionics/GNC hardware (FCCs, INS/GPS, actuators, power distribution) through to qualification.