Applied Scientist, Prime Air Flight Sciences Vehicle Design & Test

About the role

We are delivering to customers and are excited for what’s to come. If you are seeking an iterative environment where you can drive innovation, apply state-of-the-art technologies to solve real-world delivery challenges, and provide benefits to customers, Prime Air is the place for you.

Our Prime Air Drone Vehicle Design and Test team within Flight Sciences is looking for an engineer to help us rapidly configure, design, analyze, prototype, and test innovative drone vehicles. You’ll be responsible for developing, improving, and maintaining a suite of multi-disciplinary optimization (MDO) tools across all aircraft design disciplines. You’ll use these to explore new and novel drone vehicle conceptual designs in both focused and wide open design spaces, with the ultimate goal of meeting our customer requirements. You’ll have the opportunity to prototype vehicle designs and support wind tunnel and other testing of vehicle designs. You will directly support the Office of the Chief Program Engineer and work closely across all vehicle subsystem teams to ensure integrated designs that meet performance, reliability, operability, manufacturing, and cost requirements. In addition, you’ll own the Flight Sciences assessments and analysis methods for the drone vehicle design as it progresses through later stages of development.

About the team

Our Flight Sciences Vehicle Design & Test organization includes teams that span the following disciplines: Aerodynamics, Performance, Stability & Control, Configuration & Spatial Integration, Loads, Structures, Mass Properties, Multi-disciplinary Optimization (MDO), Wind Tunnel Testing, Noise Testing, Flight Test Instrumentation, and Rapid Prototyping.

Responsibilities

• Develop, improve, and maintain a suite of multi-disciplinary optimization (MDO) tools across all aircraft design disciplines.
• Explore new and novel drone vehicle conceptual designs in both focused and wide open design spaces to meet customer requirements.
• Prototype vehicle designs and support wind tunnel and other testing of vehicle designs.
• Support the Office of the Chief Program Engineer and collaborate across vehicle subsystem teams to ensure integrated designs meeting performance, reliability, operability, manufacturing, and cost requirements.
• Own Flight Sciences assessments and analysis methods for drone vehicle design through later stages of development.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, or equivalent.
• 7+ years of experience in flight vehicle design, simulation, and development.
• Knowledge of programming languages such as C/C++, Python, Java, or Perl.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, or equivalent.
• 5+ years of experience in air vehicle aerodynamic design, analysis, and testing (preferably electric propulsion vehicles).
• Wind tunnel testing experience.
• Propeller/rotor design, analysis, and testing experience.
• Experience using multi-disciplinary analysis & optimization (MDO/MDAO) tools and methods.
• Vehicle-level design intuition and ability to operate & analyze at the system-of-systems level.
• Specialization in one or more of the following domains of aircraft design: aerodynamics, performance, stability & control, propulsion, loads, airframe structures.
• Experience using: modeFRONTIER, Model Center, or OpenMDAO, and CATIA.

Pay

USA, WA, Seattle - $167,100.00 - $226,100.00 USD annually.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance, and option for Supplemental life plans).
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Mental Health Support.
• Medical Advice Line.
• Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage.
• 401(k) matching.
• Paid time off.
• Parental leave.
• Sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs).

Learn more about our benefits at amazon.jobs/en/benefits.