Propulsion Analyst - Engine Performance

ABOUT FIREFLY AEROSPACE

As an end-to-end responsive space company, Firefly Aerospace is on a mission to enable our world to launch, land, and operate in space – anywhere, anytime. Our small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles allow us to service the entire lifecycle of government and commercial missions from low Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond. We utilize carbon composite structures, patented propulsion technologies, and common components across our vehicles to iterate quickly, improve reliability, and deliver payloads at a lower cost.

SUMMARY
Firefly seeks a highly talented Propulsion Analysis Engineer to join our growing analysis team. As a Propulsion Analyst you will use your expert knowledge in fluids, thermal, and propulsion analysis to verify and influence designs of component and propulsion system hardware. This role will play a key part in this group by contributing to the overall development of the propulsion simulation infrastructure. Propulsion analysts are involved throughout the engineering process and therefore require excellent interdisciplinary communication skills.

RESPONSIBILITIES
• Perform detailed steady state and pseudo-steady state propulsion system analysis.
• Work closely with multi-disciplinary propulsion and systems engineering teams to define the operating conditions and control systems of Firefly’s engines.
• Responsible for data reduction activities to characterize propulsion system performance with an emphasis on automating several portions of this workflow.
• Develop well documented codes or procedures for performing thermal and fluid analyses, and postprocessing test results.
• Responsible for updating and correlating models based on test and flight data.
• Evaluate analysis and test results to quantify sensitivities and uncertainties, calibrate simulations, and develop design recommendations.
• Maintain and report on activity, schedule, and technical status.
• Document analysis and test results for review by responsible engineers, peers, customers, and launch authorities.
• Responsible for reviewing the analysis of peers and mentor less experienced engineers.
• Work with responsible engineers to determine instrumentation setup for testing and contribute to the creation of test plans.

QUALIFICATIONS
Required
• BS degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering or related field and 3+ years of experience in mechanical or aerospace engineering.
• 2+ years of experience in an engineering software environment.
• Proficient in the physics of thermo-fluid systems, including compressible and incompressible flow, thermodynamics, multiphase flow, chemical kinetics, mechanics, and transient phenomena.
• Programming experience with Python or MATLAB for model development and scripting (preferably Python).
• Experience in data reduction and model validation techniques with test data.
• Familiarity with modeling in Windows environments, as well as with source code control systems such as Bitbucket.

Desired
• MS/PhD degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering and/or 5+ years of experience.
• Experience with industrial CFD tools such as ANSYS or Fluent.
• Experience with industrial finite element tools such as ANSYS, ABAQUS, FEMAP, or NASTRAN.
• Experience with ROCCID, RTE, CEA, TDK, SINDA/FLUINT, ROCETS, GFSSP, or equivalent and general industry-standard propulsion design and analysis codes.
• Experience with coupled loads analysis or thermal environments analysis.
• Experience in analysis of aircraft or space vehicles during all phases of conceptual design through flight.
• Familiarity with parametric optimization techniques.
• Knowledge of statistical principles (Monte Carlo, regression, Kalman filtering).
• Experience with database development and management.