Parachute Modeling Engineer

Responsibilities

• Develop a state-of-the-art multi-body parachute system model, including parachute deployment, inflation, and full-open flight, for use on the Orion and Commercial Crew programs and future programs.
• Integrate the multi-body parachute system model into NASA's flight mechanics simulation (Julia) and NASA Trick-based simulations (C++).
• Collaborate with parachute analysis subject matter experts to plan and reconstruct parachute drop tests and reconstruct the parachute system performance from spacecraft flights.
• Assist the GN&C team in performing parachute system analyses, including assessments of the touchdown conditions.
• Assist the parachute analysis team with executing simulations on our High-Performance Computing (HPC) system.
• Perform verification and validation for flight mechanics models and simulations.
• Develop requirements documentation for flight mechanics models and simulations.
• Provide recommendations for improvements in design and software development processes.
• Perform other duties as required.

Requirements

• Typically requires a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a minimum of 4- 5 years of experience in the field or in a related area.
• Experience with 6-DOF and multi-body flight mechanics simulations.
• Experience with software development (any language).
• Experience developing, verifying, and validating parachute simulation models.
• Experience analyzing spacecraft performance.
• Experience in product delivery utilizing source code management tools such as Git/GitLab.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Able to work in a team environment consisting of NASA civil servants and contractor employees.
• Strong interpersonal skills to enable successful performance in a collaborative engineering team.
• Able to organize and prioritize tasks to meet deadlines and schedules with limited supervision.
• Able to prepare written documents and to verbally present at various meetings.

Preferred Qualifications

• Typically requires a bachelor's degree in engineering from an ABET accredited engineering school with five (5) years of related engineering experience, a master's degree from an accredited engineering school and four (4) years of related engineering experience, or a Ph.D. from an accredited engineering school and zero (0) years of related experience.
• PhD in Aerospace Engineering with a focus on flight mechanics.
• Proficiency in Julia, C++, and Linux.
• Experience with software design.