Senior Aerodynamics Analyst (Aerospace)

Location: Auckland, New Zealand. The role is based in the New Zealand office and requires eligibility to access equipment and data regulated by U.S. ITAR.

Company

hirify.global is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems, including the Neutron launch vehicle and its associated launch and test infrastructure.

What you will do

• Generate aerotables and characterize vehicle performance, including stability, control authority, loads, pressure distributions, and control-surface aerodynamics.
• Perform, validate, and document CFD analyses across hypersonic, transonic, and subsonic flow regimes.
• Characterize aerodynamic and heating environments, transients, separation events, plume interactions, base heating, PIFS, and impingement.
• Define re-entry architecture, including ballistic coefficients, concepts of operations, and compartment venting.
• Collaborate with design, test, and GNC engineers to iterate concepts, define test requirements, support Neutron first-stage recovery, and demonstrate positive margins.
• Process and interpret ground-test and flight data, confirm MPE bounds, detect out-of-family results, and resolve sensor configuration issues.

Requirements

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a similar field.
• At least 5 years of industry experience, preferably in aerospace, automotive, or marine industries.
• Strong physics and first-principles approach to problem solving.
• Expertise with one or more CFD packages: Fluent, CFX, or STAR-CCM+.
• Engineering programming experience, especially Python and packages such as NumPy, pandas, SciPy, and Matplotlib.
• Ability to work to changing deadlines in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment.

Nice to have

• Experience with NX CAD and Teamcenter or comparable packages for model interrogation and defeaturing.
• Experience selecting sensors and processing or interpreting accelerometer, strain-gauge, and thermocouple data.
• Experience with thermal modeling packages such as Thermal Desktop, THERMICA, or NX SST.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on real rocket, spacecraft, and launch-site hardware for space missions.
• Collaborate across analysis, design, test, and guidance, navigation, and control teams.
• Work in a fast-paced environment focused on innovation, teamwork, tight deadlines, and practical execution.
• New Zealand office applicants undergo background and nationality checks before employment offers.
• For the New Zealand role, ITAR access eligibility may require citizenship of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, a European Union country, or a NATO member country, subject to applicable restrictions.