Lead TPS Engineer

Who We Are: 

Eras of humanity can often be defined by a dominant transportation mode - horse drawn carriage, ocean faring boats, or aircraft. These were spurred by a small group of people rigorously focused on building technology to achieve faster access to more of the world.  We seek to usher in a new era of humanity defined by universal access to the whole globe free of borders and the presence of a routine way from space to Earth. To do this, we are building highly maneuverable re-entry vehicles that can loiter in orbit before precision landing back on Earth.    

What You’ll Do: 

Inversion’s reentry vehicles are pushing the limits of hypersonic flight. As a Lead Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) Engineer, you will be responsible for bringing up Inversion’s in-house heatshield design and manufacturing teams. You will work alongside Inversion’s aerodynamic, structures, and aerothermal teams to design the flight TPS for Inversion’s lifting-body reentry vehicles and explore ideal TPS solutions for performance, production, and cost. In this role, you will: 

• Develop, test, and qualify new or refined thermal protection systems for Inversion’s Arc vehicle. 
• Develop the analysis and design workflow of the flight heatshields for flight vehicles. 
• Design the production systems and optimize workflows to produce the heatshield materials. 
• Explore trades between ablatives, ceramics, and other TPS materials. 
• Lead technical and programmatic architecture for the TPS labs and development timelines. 
• Work with outside vendors, suppliers, and testing resources to bringing in new materials, capabilities, and processes. 

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Material Science, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, or Chemical Engineering, or equivalent experience in a relevant field with a minimum of 5+ years of professional experience. 
• 2+ years of experience working with hypersonic reentry thermal protection systems. 
• Strong understanding of the fundamentals behind aerothermal heating of reentry vehicles, TPS production, and thermal environments of extreme temperature applications. 
• Experience using Siemens NX or similar CAD software. 
• This role is onsite at our Playa Vista, California office. 

Desired Qualifications: 

• Professional experience working with, formulating, or producing ablative TPS. 
• Experience integrating heatshield materials onto flight vehicles. 

The California annual base salary for this role is currently $130,000-$196,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.  

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