Aero Performance Engineer

Job Summary

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is a leader in unmanned aircraft and radar systems. They are seeking an Aero Performance Engineer in San Diego (Poway, CA).

Responsibilities

• Support all phases of aircraft design, including conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design.
• Take part in wind tunnel and flight test planning, execution, and post-test analysis.
• Conduct trade studies and carry out sensitivity analyses to inform high-level engineering design decisions.
• Predict and validate aircraft performance by developing and maintaining analytical Modeling and Simulation (M&S) tools.
• Generate high-fidelity 6DOF aerodynamic databases from wind tunnel and CFD data.
• Collaborate among peers, as part of a multi-disciplinary team, to solve unique and complex engineering challenges.
• Participate in internal and customer-facing design reviews, test readiness reviews, flight briefings, and technical meetings.
• Contribute to a broad swath of novel aircraft platforms ranging from Small Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) to Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).

Qualifications

• Typically requires a bachelors degree, masters degree or PhD in engineering or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution and progressive engineering experience as follows; nine or more years of experience with a bachelors degree, seven or more years of experience with a masters degree, or four or more years with a PhD.
• May substitute equivalent engineering experience in lieu of education.
• Completion of relevant coursework in the areas of low- and high-speed aerodynamics, air-breathing propulsion, and aircraft performance analysis.
• Advanced MATLAB programming experience is required, including the ability to interpret and extend upon in-house, peer-developed, codes.
• Able to operate with relative autonomy; proactively collaborating with other disciplines and seeking out help when appropriate.
• Effective at communicating complex engineering concepts both verbally and in writing.
• Understands engineering concepts, principles, and theory; and has experience demonstrating the application of those concepts.
• Must possess the ability to understand new concepts quickly and apply them accurately throughout an evolving environment.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Secret security clearance is required.
• Ability to work on-site during normal business hours for indeterminate periods of time as dictated by program security requirements.

Desired Skills / Qualifications

• Familiarity with Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimization (MDAO), Design of Experiments (DoE), and surrogate modeling techniques.
• Applied experience using aerodynamic and aircraft design and analysis tools such as AVL, XFOIL, MSES, OpenVSP, OpenMDAO, SUAVE, RDS, Aviary, NASTRAN, LEAPS, FLOPS, and/or other.
• Strong background in applied statistics and aerodynamic uncertainty quantification, with experience using Gaussian process regression, surrogate modeling, and/or sensitivity analysis to support 6-DOF aerodynamic modeling, performance prediction, and Monte Carlo analysis.
• Experience with wind tunnel data uncertainty analysis preferred.
• Experience with Python, Java, or C/C++ programming languages.
• Foundational understanding of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles.
• Contributed to internally developed engineering analysis tools and software.
• Exposure to adjacent technical areas, including Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC), and/or aircraft structures.
• Familiarity with implementation of thrust-drag bookkeeping and force-moment accounting methodologies.
• Active DoD Secret, or higher, security clearance.