Director of Engineering, Reentry

Who We Are:

Eras of humanity can often be defined by a dominant transportation mode - horse drawn carriage, ocean faring boats, or aircraft. These were spurred by a small group of people rigorously focused on building technology to achieve faster access to more of the world.  We seek to usher in a new era of humanity defined by universal access to the whole globe free of borders and the presence of a routine way from space to Earth. To do this, we are building highly maneuverable re-entry vehicles that can loiter in orbit before precision landing back on Earth.   

What You’ll Do:

As the head of Inversion’s Reentry teams, you will spearhead the creation, design, and leadership of Inversion’s products’ reentry systems and vehicles. Inversion’s next-generation spacecraft is capable of operating in space and, on command, reentering anywhere in the world. Inversion’s hypersonic lifting body design will create a highly maneuverable, highly accurate, and low-cost to produce vehicle that will be an industry-first. In this role, you will:

• Report directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
• Lead technical and programmatic architecture and execution of the Reentry systems on Inversion’s Arc vehicle including Aerodynamics, Thermal Protection Systems (TPS), Primary Structures, and Control Surfaces.
• Responsible for the architecture definition, simulation-based performance analysis, development of hardware, validation of design, and production of a reentry vehicle.
• Assemble an incredibly talent-dense team of engineers to design, analyze, build, test, and produce a reentry vehicle.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent experience in a relevant field with a minimum of 10+ years of engineering complex systems.
• Minimum of 4 years of experience in hypersonic, supersonic, reentry, or rocketry flight sciences.
• Demonstrated success in vehicle design and OML design that culminated in flight testing.
• Strong knowledge of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), wind tunnel testing, aerothermal analysis, and glide trajectories.
• Industry leadership experience managing interdisciplinary teams and responsibility over program-level technical decision-making.
• Strong fundamentals on aerospace-level primary structures requirements and design.
• Successful track record of taking projects from design through deployment into production.

Desired Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering, or an equivalent field.
• Professional experience executing modeling and simulation tools for hypersonic applications.
• Experience with key aspects of hypersonic system modeling such as: hypersonic boundary layer, heat transfer modeling, ablation, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, chemistry modeling, turbulence, etc.
• Strong understanding of ablative thermal protection materials, their capabilities, and how to analyze them.

The California annual base salary for this role is currently $175,000-$276,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.