Aircraft Performance Engineer

What You'll Do:

• Develop, maintain, and validate aircraft and propulsion performance models supporting design, simulation, and flight test.
• Own the engine performance model, including thrust, fuel flow, efficiency, bleed/power extraction, atmospheric effects, installation effects, and engine operating limits throughout the flight envelope.
• Develop methods for in-flight thrust determination, using available engine parameters, aircraft state data, aerodynamic models, and flight-test measurements.
• Perform engine model calibration and correlation against OEM performance data, ground-test data, and flight-test results.
• Analyze propulsion and aircraft flight-test data to determine installed thrust, drag, excess thrust/power, specific fuel consumption, and overall aircraft performance.
• As part of Flight Sciences, work closely with Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Flight Test, Systems, and Performance teams to establish consistent thrust and drag accounting methodologies.
• Conduct aircraft performance analyses including takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, landing, range, payload, fuel burn, and reserves.
• Develop tools and processes for flight-test performance reduction, including atmospheric normalization, data filtering, uncertainty assessment, and model correlation.
• Support the definition of flight-test procedures and instrumentation requirements needed to validate engine and aircraft performance.

What You Bring:

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong experience in gas turbine engine performance and aircraft propulsion integration.
• Demonstrated experience developing or using engine cycle/performance models and interpreting engine deck or OEM propulsion data.
• Experience with in-flight thrust determination or flight-test propulsion performance analysis.
• Strong understanding of turbofan engine performance, including gross thrust, ram drag, net thrust, corrected parameters, fuel flow, atmospheric corrections, and installation effects.
• Strong understanding of aircraft performance, aerodynamics, propulsion-airframe integration, and aircraft energy methods.
• Experience analyzing and correlating ground-test, engine-test, simulation, and flight-test data.
• Proficiency with MATLAB and Python and experience developing engineering analysis tools and automated data-reduction methods.
• Familiarity with aircraft data acquisition, instrumentation, telemetry, and flight-test data processing.
• Strong analytical skills and demonstrated ability to solve problems that cross traditional aerodynamic, propulsion, and flight-test boundaries.
• Excellent technical communication and documentation skills.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience conducting in-flight thrust determination on transport-category aircraft or flight-test programs.
• Experience with engine performance tools such as NPSS, GasTurb, OEM engine decks, or equivalent proprietary engine-modeling environments.
• Experience correlating engine deck predictions against measured engine parameters such as N1/N2, EGT/TGT, fuel flow, pressure, temperature, and aircraft flight conditions.
• Familiarity with thrust bookkeeping and drag accounting, including separation of installed propulsion effects from aerodynamic drag.
• Experience with flight-test techniques for determining aircraft drag, thrust, climb performance, and cruise performance.
• Understanding of measurement uncertainty, parameter identification, sensitivity analysis, and statistical/model-correlation methods applied to flight-test data.
• Experience with Part 25 aircraft performance certification and certification flight testing.
• Experience with unconventional configurations, including blended wing body aircraft and highly integrated propulsion installations.
• Familiarity with aircraft mission/performance simulation and multidisciplinary performance optimization.
• Ability to use AI to efficiently develop tools and help in the documentation.

Compensation:

Our compensation package is a blend of base salary and equity options for eligible employees. The range for this role is $150,000 - $180,000. We consider a number of factors when presenting a final offer, including geography, internal equity and years of experience and expertise.

Benefits

• Generous PTO
• 12 paid holidays
• 401(k)
• Medical, Dental, Vision insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Equity tax advisory services
• Supportive work culture