The posting
Senior Aerodynamics & Flight Sciences Engineer
Company: Name disclosed upon mutual interest · Location: Herndon, VA (on-site) — Denver, CO considered for the right candidate · Reports to: VP of Aircraft Design / VP of Aircraft Programs · Comp: Starting at $140,000 base, commensurate with experience, plus meaningful early-stage equity and bonus eligibility up to $175,000 · Clearance: U.S. Person required; ability to obtain and hold a security clearance
About the Client
The client builds a family of low-cost, high-altitude and long-range systems: stratospheric balloon platforms, balloon-deployed ISR and communications buses, autonomous glide vehicles and dispensers, and a family of ultra long range (ULR), affordable-mass, ground-launched one-way attack and ISR drones. The company has closed a recent funding round backed by a top-tier venture syndicate, and its systems are flying and being tested in operationally relevant environments today, including active flight test campaigns forward-deployed overseas. The team is small, moving fast, and every engineer owns hardware that flies.
About the Role
You will own the aerodynamic model and outer mold line for the client's ULR airframes: body shape, control surfaces, static margin, stability and control derivatives, and the pipeline that turns geometry into the coefficient tables that the 6-DOF and flight software consume. Hands-on and end-to-end — low-fidelity sizing through CFD, wind tunnel, and flight test correlation.
Just as important: you will own how flight sciences data moves through the company. They want someone who has seen what a modern test data stack looks like — real-time telemetry capture, automated test orchestration, contextualized datasets, instant post-test review — and can build that discipline in from the start rather than bolting it on at 200 people. If you have used or built on platforms like Nominal Core or Connect, or written the internal tooling that turns raw wind tunnel and flight test data into a design decision the same day, that experience is directly on point here.
They are equally interested in how you use modern AI tooling. Agentic coding assistants, AI-assisted CFD pre/post and mesh generation, surrogate and reduced-order models trained on test data, LLM-driven analysis over test archives — these are not treated as novelties. An engineer who leverages them well produces multiples of the design iterations of one who does not, and they want someone who has already internalized that.
Responsibilities
- Aerodynamic model and OML for ULR airframes: configuration, control surfaces, static margin, stability and control derivatives
- The geometry-to-coefficient-table pipeline feeding 6-DOF simulation and flight software
- CFD across the subsonic and transonic regimes (OpenFOAM, Ansys Fluent, STAR-CCM+, or equivalent), calibrated against low-fidelity methods (AVL, XFOIL/XFLR5, OpenVSP, Missile DATCOM) and test data
- Wind tunnel campaigns end to end: test article definition, instrumentation plan, execution, data reduction, and the design changes that follow
- Flight test support: pre-flight prediction, post-flight correlation, and closing the loop on the model
- The flight sciences data and tooling stack — telemetry ingest, automated test review, visualization, and analysis tooling that lets the team go from test complete to decision in minutes, not days
- Vehicle-level trades with propulsion, structures, and avionics, under real cost and manufacturability constraints for affordable-mass production
Requirements
Must-Haves
- BS or higher in Aerospace, Aeronautical, Astronautical, or Mechanical Engineering
- 4+ years of aerodynamics, flight sciences, or aircraft design experience, ideally at a fast-moving UAS, defense-tech, or launch company
- Hands-on CFD experience with demonstrated judgment about where fidelity is worth paying for and where it is not
- Wind tunnel experience from planning through data reduction, on a real program
- Strong scripting and tooling ability (Python, MATLAB, C++/Rust a plus) — you build your own analysis and visualization tools rather than waiting on someone else
- Fluency with modern test data infrastructure and AI-assisted engineering workflows
- Track record of taking an airframe or major configuration from concept through test and flight
- Bias toward low-cost, manufacturable airframes: meeting the kinematic and packaging requirement with a simpler shape or cheaper fabrication route than the legacy answer
- Willingness to work extended hours and occasional weekends around test campaigns and program milestones
- Travel to test ranges and customer sites, including international travel
Nice-to-Haves
- Prior work on tactical UAS, munitions, glide vehicles, or high-altitude platforms
- Experience standing up a test data platform or flight test review process at a growing company
- High-alpha, post-stall, or transonic aerodynamics experience, and the wind tunnel discipline to trust the numbers
- GNC or 6-DOF plant model exposure — the airframe sets the kinematic ceiling and the plant model decides what's real; the team doesn't split those concerns across org charts
- Prior flight test range experience, including international deployments
Why This Role
At a prime or a late-stage company, this scope would be split across four engineers and two organizations. Here you own it. You'll report directly to the VP of Aircraft Design, sit close enough to the shop floor to touch what you analyzed last week, and see your designs fly on real programs inside months rather than years. Meaningful equity, a top-tier venture syndicate behind the company, and a product line being stood up from a blank sheet.
The client is an equal opportunity employer. This role supports defense work.
