Senior Thermal Structures Engineer Verified today

About Inversion Space

Inversion is an aerospace and defense company pioneering advanced reentry technology. The company's maneuverable reentry spacecraft, Arc, is designed for rapid global cargo delivery, hypersonic testing, and national security missions. Inversion designs, manufactures, and integrates its spacecraft under one roof in Los Angeles.

The Role

A heat shield is where the harsh reentry thermal environment meets structural reality: materials want to expand, attachments must not fail, and parts must be manufacturable at scale. As Senior Thermal Structures Engineer, you will own the detailed design of heat shield and hot structure hardware from concept through flight, with responsibility for both design and analysis of a key subsystem for a maneuverable reentry vehicle.

Your Responsibilities

• Own the detailed mechanical design of heat shield components and assemblies, including TPS panels, hot substructure, attachments, and vehicle interfaces
• Perform structural and thermal-structural analysis of your designs, from hand calculations through detailed finite element analysis
• Design for environments where thermally induced strains are a primary driver, managing CTE mismatch, thermal gradients, and constrained expansion across joints and interfaces
• Work with materials and manufacturing engineers to design components that can be fabricated, machined, and inspected in high-temperature composite material systems
• Define and support structural and thermal-structural testing to verify your designs, from element-level tests through qualification
• Develop part and assembly models, drawings, and GD&T, carrying designs from concept through released engineering

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or equivalent experience in a related field
• Typically 5+ years of experience in mechanical or structural design of aerospace hardware
• Experience performing structural analysis of your own designs, including classical hand analysis and finite element analysis (e.g., Nastran, Abaqus, Ansys)
• Experience with thermal-structural analysis, including thermally induced stress and deflection
• Strong fundamentals in strength of materials, structural mechanics, and design of fastened and bonded joints
• Proficiency with 3D CAD sufficient to own detailed part and assembly design end-to-end, including drawings and GD&T
• Proven ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment, including prototyping and rapid iteration
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government Secret/Top Secret security clearance

Desired Qualifications

• Experience designing high-temperature structures where thermally induced strains are a major design driver (hypersonic airframes, turbine engine hot sections, exhaust structures)
• Experience designing high-density TPS components from reinforced carbon/carbon, carbon phenolic, or ceramic matrix composites
• Experience designing hot-structure attachment schemes, such as expansion or slip joints, standoffs, flexures, and compliant interfaces
• Experience analyzing anisotropic and composite materials, including appropriate failure criteria
• Experience with manufacturing constraints of composite or ablative materials, including machining, densification shrinkage, and inspection
• Experience designing or supporting thermal-structural test campaigns, including strain and deflection measurement at elevated temperature
• Prior experience working in startups and/or small independent teams

Location and Compensation

This position requires in-office presence at our headquarters in Playa Vista, CA. The California annual base salary is $137,000-$193,000. Pay is determined by role, level, location, alignment with market data, and individual candidate factors including job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, and internal equity.