Associate Project / Systems Engineer (Aerospace)

Location: Flightwave, Torrance, CA 90503, USA; office and production-floor activities are required. Applicants must be a U.S. person or otherwise eligible to access ITAR/EAR-controlled information.

Base salary: $71,760–$112,125 per year, plus annual equity and bonus eligibility.

Company

hirify.global develops UAS products and related aerospace hardware through Flightwave.

What you will do

• Support new UAS product programs across requirements, architecture, design, integration, verification, validation, production ramp, and release, with a focus on requirements traceability.
• Review product requirements documents and development build plans with Product, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Operations teams.
• Build engineering program plans covering Gantt schedules, resource allocation, dependencies, risks, and mitigation strategies, using Agile methods where appropriate.
• Facilitate cross-functional peer reviews and PDR, CDR, and MRR design reviews across mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and manufacturing teams.
• Track program status, tradeoffs, decisions, critical-path activities, and execution risks while escalating issues and unblocking teams.
• Support technical trade studies, DFMEA activities, Product Development Process adoption, and improvements to gated hardware development and delivery methods.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace, Electrical, or Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
• At least 1 year of experience in the Aerospace & Defense industry.
• Exposure to risk and opportunity management while balancing schedule, cost, performance, and other tradeoffs.
• Strong written and verbal communication, technical fluency, organizational skills, and attention to schedule detail.
• Experience working with cross-functional teams and reporting schedule and execution risks.
• Experience with project scheduling tools, preferably MS Project, including Gantt planning.
• Familiarity with modern project management or Kanban applications such as Jira, Trello, Linear, or Notion.
• Eligibility to access ITAR/EAR-controlled information as a U.S. person or through another applicable authorization.

Nice to have

• Three or more years of experience as a Project or Systems Engineer.
• Experience with vision systems, autonomous or unmanned systems, aerospace platforms, or other regulated or high-reliability products.
• Familiarity with PCBA, propulsion, avionics, and other flight-critical hardware and their impact on project scoping and planning.
• Experience leading failure-mode or root-cause investigations, especially for complex electromechanical systems.
• Experience in environments combining Agile software development with gated hardware development cycles.
• Understanding of full aerospace and defense hardware development lifecycles.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a dynamic hardware development environment involving ambiguous and technically complex programs.
• Collaborate across Engineering, Product, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Operations.
• Annual equity and bonus eligibility in addition to base salary.
• Employment requires a post-offer background check and participation in E-Verify.
• Physical work includes extended computer use, standing during first builds and production-floor activities, handling components and hardware, and occasional lifting or moving of items up to 25 pounds.