Mechanical Engineer III

About the Role

Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company on a mission to reliably and repeatedly launch, land, and operate space systems from Earth to the Moon and beyond. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is seeking talented Mechanical or Aerospace Engineers to join our Primary Structures Team as a Senior or Lead Structures Responsible Engineer for Primary Structures. You will develop state-of-the-art pressurized structures throughout the product life cycle for Launch Vehicles, working within a highly skilled, dynamic team involved in all aspects of analysis, design, fabrication, and testing.

Responsibilities

• Formulate the comprehensive cradle-to-grave roadmap for your hardware, owning conceptual design, structural layout, sizing analysis, hardware production, and structural testing.
• Design and development of composite pressurized structures.
• Mass optimization of existing designs and requalifying designs.
• Support products from conceptual creation, design release, analysis, prototype, qualification, and production.
• Support configuration development and trade studies.
• Maintain requirements, activity schedule, budget, and status.
• Create CAD, manufacturing drawings, specifications, and other documentation.
• Perform first-order strength and sizing calculations for your structure.

Qualifications

• B.S. degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering.
• 6+ years of experience in a structural system design-related role.
• Strong design and integration skills using 3-D CAD software (Siemens NX / FiberSim preferable).
• Ability to effectively work in a multi-discipline team and provide technical guidance and insight.
• Experience with industry FEA/FEM tools like Nastran, ANSYS, FEMAP, Simcenter, etc.
• A passion for structures.

Skills

• Experience taking hardware from analysis, through test, and back through analysis validation (desired).
• Familiarity with aerospace standard structural analysis methods (Bruhn, Niu, Roark, etc).
• Working knowledge of composite manufacturing methods, material selection, testing, and characterization.
• Demonstrated experience with composite structures and manufacturing techniques.
• Experience with pressurant or propellant tanks (bonus).
• Experience with filament wound and/or AFP structures (bonus).
• Passion for very large pressurized structures (bonus).