The future of aerospace and defense starts here.
Ursa Major was founded to revolutionize how America and its allies access and apply high-performance propulsion, from hypersonics to solid rocket motors, satellite maneuvering and launch. We design and deliver propulsion and defense systems that solve the most urgent and critical national security demands.
The Program Chief Engineer (Senior Responsible Engineer (RE)) for Solid Missile Systems (SMS) serves as the program’s technical lead, directing a multidisciplinary team of design, systems, analysis, and manufacturing engineers through all phases of SRM development and deployment. In coordination with the Program Manager and under the authority of the SRM Chief Engineer, the RE establishes and manages product architecture, ensures disciplined application of systems engineering practices, and drives design maturity, analytical fidelity, and risk reduction. Core responsibilities include performing and delegating detailed design and analysis tasks, coordinating special studies, and overseeing material characterization, subsystem qualification, and full system-level qualification and verification. The RE also partners with SMS leaders across all disciplines to plan and execute ballistic, thermal, and structural analyses, as well as post-test data reduction and correlation, to validate performance and enable transition to production-ready hardware.
This role is highly self-driven with significant a requirement for leadership and delegation abilities. The RE will be the product and program technical owner, making key decisions for both to drive successful product development and program technical execution.
Responsibilities:
- Product Architecture – Own the design and evolution of SRM architecture across programs. Ensure alignment with performance objectives, manufacturability, reusability, integration, and scalability. Lead/delegate design trade studies and down-selects.
- Product Maturity – Manages product and product team from concept through development and technical advancement, organizing iterative design, build and test campaigns to promote technical and manufacturing maturity.
- Product Qualification – Plans and coordinates activities leading to product qualification, including: Design-for-qualification; Systems engineering and requirements streamlining for qualification activities, qualification testing, insensitive munitions testing, hazards analysis testing.
- Product Engineering Analysis – Works with multi-disciplinary leaders to organize and task out all needed analysis to validate propulsion performance. Oversee mass properties, trajectory coupling, thermal management, and structural margin assessments.
- Production-Readiness – Ensures best practices for design-for-manufacture, including material selection, assembly considerations, and overall unit cost
- Product Risk Strategy – Work with the Chief Engineer and Systems Engineering team to identify and manage technical and program risks; develop mitigation strategies through modeling, testing, and early-stage prototyping.
- Secondary Customer Interaction – Supports customer engagement, taking the lead on scheduled technical interchanges and technical discussions. Develops content and manages team inputs for customer deliverables. Leads presentations efforts for CoDR, PDR, CDR, post-test data reports etc… Works in tandem with the Program Manager and Chief Engineer to ensure all deliverables and milestones are met on time and with high engineering rigor.
- Product Integrity – Ensure the technical rigor, safety, and quality of SRM products from clean sheet to production-ready status. Champions design discipline, test data correlation, anomaly resolution, and lessons learned integration.
Other duties as assigned
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, or related engineering discipline
- 5+ years of experience in propulsion or aerospace product development, including solid rocket motor design and systems integration.
- Demonstrated technical leadership across multidisciplinary engineering teams
- Experience with SRM-specific subsystems including cases, nozzles, insulation, and grain design
- Strong systems thinking and ability to balance performance, reliability, cost, and manufacturability
Preferred Experience:
- Master’s degree in aerospace engineering or related field
- Direct customer interaction with government and defense contractors
- Hands-on experience with testing and qualification of solid propulsion systems
- Familiarity with modern digital engineering tools, modeling & simulation, and FEA
- Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and grow technical teams
Colorado law requires us to tell you the base compensation range of this role, which is $118,000 - $147,000, determined by your education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. What we can’t quantify for you are the exciting challenges, supportive team, and amazing culture we enjoy.
Classification: Full-time Exempt