Aerothermal Engineer II Verified today
About the Team
Relativity's Integrated Performance teams ensure that products work across all systems and disciplines, from trajectory design to aerodynamics to reliability analysis. Your group sizes the Terran R rocket, designs its missions for customer success and reusability, and ensures every system is engineered correctly for the demanding environments of launch and entry.
About the Role
You will own aerothermal engineering for Terran R, reporting to technical leadership. On a weekly basis you will perform analysis, develop software tools, and support design teams.
- Develop and execute computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses to solve novel challenges in vehicle entry heating and supersonic retropropulsion
- Drive the design of major Terran R system elements like fins, flaps, heat shields, and primary structure to meet criteria for temperature and heating
- Guide and mentor responsible hardware engineers to ensure hardware meets aerothermal requirements
- Scope and develop aerothermal databases for ascent and entry, including uncertainty quantification, from multiple sources like CFD, empirical methods, and wind tunnel testing
- Size thermal protection systems (TPS) for flight
- Support reusable TPS material development and testing
- Mature Relativity's tools for developing and communicating aerothermal data, including custom and commercial code, databases, and data processing tools
To be successful you should be self-motivated, adaptable, and able to contribute significantly to a fast-paced integrated vehicle program. You will resolve ambiguity, drive projects to completion, and use strong organizational skills to manage documentation and communication of actions, recommendations, and decisions.
About You
- Undergraduate degree in engineering or related field
- 2+ years relevant experience
- Proficiency in compressible flow and thermal analysis, preferably on entry vehicles
- Experience executing CFD workflows for external flow, preferably including engine plume simulation
- Experience solving cross-disciplinary design problems on integrated vehicles
- Proficiency in Python and industry-standard CFD tools like FUN3D and Star-CCM+, including use of HPC clusters
Nice to Haves
- Graduate degree in engineering or related field
- 5+ years relevant experience across one or more program lifecycles
- Experience with thermal protection system sizing and analysis using standard tools like FIAT, CHAR, MINIVER, or LAURA
- Exposure to aerothermal instrumentation, wind tunnel and flight testing