Turbine Durability Engineer

The Senior Hot Section Durability Engineer is a technical leader responsible for ensuring combustor and turbine gas-path components meet time-on-wing, repairability, and Hot Section Refurbishment Interval (HSRI) requirements while maintaining performance, fuel efficiency, manufacturability, and cost goals. This role spans the full product life cycle-from early concept design and optimization through development engine testing, certification, field support, and aftermarket engineering.

Hot Section Durability Engineers design and assess advanced high-temperature hardware such as turbine airfoils, blade outer air seals (BOAS), combustor liner panels, and cast heat exchangers.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead durability strategy for turbine and combustor components, ensuring compliance with time-on-wing, repairability, and HSRI targets.

• Responsible for design and assessment of turbine airfoils, BOAS, combustor liners including internal cooling schemes, film cooling technologies, thermal barrier coatings, and advanced materials.

• Develop and execute analyses of varying complexity, including:

• Mechanical, time-dependent damage predictions (creep, oxidation, TBC spallation, TMF).

• Full conjugate heat transfer (CHT) and coupled aerothermal-structural simulations.

• Reduced-order empirical models and 1D thermal models for rapid design iteration.

• Evaluate the durability impact of complex internal cores, cooling geometries, and advanced manufacturing processes.

• Conduct and lead root-cause investigations using new, returned, and repaired hardware to understand field performance, distress progression, and failure mechanisms.

• Provide technical leadership in design reviews, safety boards, and program milestones; mentor junior engineers on durability methods and best practices.

• Support manufacturing and supply chain by understanding process capabilities, anticipated variability, and implications for durability and quality.

• Develop and refine internal tools, models, and methodologies to accelerate durability assessments and improve prediction fidelity.

Required Technical Expertise

• Deep understanding of fluid mechanics and heat transfer, including convection, conduction, radiation, and aerothermal loads on hot-section components.

• Strong knowledge of material properties and high-temperature distress mechanisms, including:

• Thermal barrier coating (TBC) spallation

• Bond coat and substrate oxidation

• Airfoil creep

• Thermomechanical fatigue (TMF), LCF/HCF interactions

• Familiarity with manufacturing processes and their variability, including:

• Core die tooling and internal passage formation

• Investment casting of superalloys

• Advanced coating systems

• Cooling hole drilling and finishing processes

• Ability to model durability impacts of environmental and mission factors, such as sand ingestion, corrosion, and high-cycle thermal transients.

• Proficiency with finite element analysis (FEA) and heat transfer tools; experience with conjugate analyses and coupled physics is preferred.

• Experience with commercial FEA software (e.g., ANSYS Structural and Thermal Analysis using both Workbench AND ADPL) and life analysis codes.

• Hand on Experience in using CAD tools like NX or Creo;

• Pogramming capabilities in Python and MatLab, or the equivalent;

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, or related field; Master's or PhD strongly preferred.

• 12+ years of experience in hot-section turbine, combustor, or high-temperature component durability.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex durability analyses, investigations, and cross-functional decision making.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence design, manufacturing, and program leadership.

• U.S. citizenship is required due to the nature of defense contracts.