Principal / Senior Principal Navigation Systems Engineer
Northrop Grumman · Los Angeles, CA
$114,000–$213,400from the description
Jul 11, 2026
Los Angeles, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role centers on designing and implementing model-based navigation software for defense applications, including analyzing navigation performance in lab and flight test environments. Day-to-day work involves developing sensor fusion algorithms, state-estimation techniques, and multi-sensor calibration using inertial, GPS, and other sensors. It suits engineers with hands-on experience in inertial navigation systems and advanced filtering methods such as Kalman filtering.
Senior level · 5+ years · Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $112,112 (middle half $73,931–$166,799). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
This requisition covers two levels simultaneously: Principal Navigation Systems Engineer (5+ years with BS, 3+ with MS, 1+ with PhD) and Senior Principal Navigation Systems Engineer (8+ years with BS, 6+ with MS, 4+ with PhD). The salary range spans both levels ($114,000–$171,000 for Principal; $142,200–$213,400 for Senior Principal). The overall years minimum reflects the lower bound of the Principal level.
The role is classified as Systems/Navigation Engineering rather than pure software development, though it involves implementing navigation algorithms and model-based software. 15-1252 (Software Developers) is noted as a plausible alternative given the software implementation emphasis.
A Secret clearance is not required at start ('CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: No') but candidates must be able to obtain and maintain one — treated as a hard gate on clearance eligibility.
The position is contingent upon Funding/Contract Award, which may affect actual hiring timeline.
Full-time onsite in Woodland Hills, CA is explicitly required; remote work is not available.
Ignored 5 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): noise modeling, multi-sensor synchronization and calibration, satellite signal acquisition and tracking, M-code signal processing, tracking loop design.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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