RESEARCH ENGINEER - SR. RESEARCH ENGINEER - Computational Materials Integrity (NASGRO)

Who We Are:

We develop and apply advanced computational methods to assess the performance of a variety of engineering materials that are used in a wide range of systems with a particular focus on estimating the life and reliability of high-consequence engineering applications. We seek candidates skilled in continuum mechanics to support NASGRO software development for fatigue crack growth and fracture of metallic materials under sustained and cyclic loading. Most relevant technical areas include damage tolerance, computational mechanics, and computational material science, and fatigue and fracture.

Objectives of this Role:

• Join our team to perform fundamental and applied research through the development of advanced fatigue crack growth for material and structural integrity assessments.
• Help manage our established software codebase and provide guidance on the technical solutions to solve problems related to practical fatigue crack growth, fracture, and structural integrity assessments.
• Work within a large team and a software operations framework to write integrate, compile, text and debug source code to support long-term, commercial software programs.
• Apply principles in advanced continuum mechanics, numerical methods, materials science, and applied mathematics to solve unique problems using the modern Fortran programming language.
• Build and apply skills to support contract research programs, develop new technology areas, and interact with government and commercial clients.

Daily and Monthly Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership toward the ongoing development and enhancement of fatigue crack growth software program NASGRO®.
• Coordinate accuracy, precision, and consistency test campaigns of predictions implemented within high-criticality commercial software.
• Drive the development of new practical methods to perform damage tolerance assessments.
• Champion innovations focused on reducing memory footprint, optimizing computational efficiency, and streamlining the analysis of large datasets.
• Oversee the resolution of user-reported issues by identifying root causes and implement fixes in a timely manner.
• Interact with a larger development team to coordinate issue resolution within a large, interconnected, and legacy codebase.
• Collaborate with clients, stakeholders, and development teams to align the software’s documentation, usage, and evolution with industry demands.
• Lead reports and papers on new technical solutions.
• Lead tasks and projects to completion, ensuring they are delivered within scope, budget, and schedule constraints.
• Drive improvement initiatives to optimize software development and execution.

Requirements:

• Requires a Masters or a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Structural Engineering, Computational Mechanics, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Aerospace Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, or similar engineering degree. Those with a Master require 1 year of related professional experience, those with a PhD do not require any industry experience.
• 1-5 years: Experience and/or training in fracture mechanics, fatigue crack growth assessment, continuum mechanics, materials science, applied mechanics, applied mathematics, and mechanical behavior of engineering metals.
• 0-5 years: Experience and/or training in software development processes for scientific computing, including version control, optimization, software verification, relevant programming languages, and programming assisted by ML/AI tools.
• 0-5 years: Experience in stress-intensity factor solutions, weight function methods, fatigue crack growth algorithms, time-dependent crack growth, small-crack growth mechanisms, threshold, shakedown, rainflow, environmental fatigue, and multi-point computational fracture mechanics.
• 0-5 years: Experience in customer issue resolution, supporting for legacy code and application programming interfaces, and using ML/AI tools to streamline software development, sustainment, documentation, and verification.
• A valid/clear driver's license is required.