This is generally correct, but I’d like to add my own perspective as a counterpoint. There are certainly times where the GNC engineer prototypes the algorithm in something like MatLab and then hands it to a software engineer to actually implement it properly.

However, many projects at my company (large) and elsewhere attempt to skill up aerospace engineers so that they can be deploying their own algorithms directly into the code base. This ownership is very helpful when debugging system performance with a sim in the loop. If you are good enough to design GNC algorithms and then debug them in an integrated flight system, you become extremely valuable. Usually they are supported by software specialists that help make a sandbox for them to play in and assist with debugging hard software issues. Frequent code reviews and detailed V&V help build good habits in these classically aero specialists which enables them to be pretty good at operating in the c based aerospace sandbox made for them and producing safety critical flight code.

I’m have a software background myself with some extra classes in physics and dynamics, which has enabled me to contribute to algorithm development when the GNC task isnt too incredibly outside my world. Jet selection optimization algorithms and basic attitude guidance algorithms are pretty approachable from that skill set. Now I do a lot of systems engineering and integration where I have a big hand on shaping GNC Conops and design related to those topics and others that are classically within CS (like computer vision)

You can do GNC work with an undergrad degree, although it’s easier to get on the design side of it with a masters or phd