Senior Aerospace Engineer – Aerothermal & Hypersonics (Hypersonics)

Location: Huntington Beach, California, United States; on-site. Must be a U.S. person: U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Work may involve U.S. export-controlled information under EAR and ITAR regulations, and employment requires authorization to work in the United States.

Salary: $160,000–$210,000 base annually for the senior level, plus equity. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurance, retirement savings, paid time off, and professional development funding.

Company

hirify.global is a defense technology startup developing next-generation autonomous, scalable, and decentralized defense platforms.

What you will do

• Lead hypersonic vehicle shaping and aerodynamic and aerothermal design for atmospheric entry and high-speed flight systems.
• Predict aerodynamic heating and high-temperature flight environments using engineering methods and higher-fidelity analysis.
• Develop and evaluate Thermal Protection System concepts, materials, architectures, heat shields, and thermal margins.
• Perform trajectory-informed aerothermal environment prediction and vehicle performance assessments for entry, descent, re-entry, and hypersonic missions.
• Integrate aero, heating, TPS, structures, propulsion, GNC, and systems engineering trades throughout the product lifecycle.
• Establish and execute ground aerothermal and TPS tests, flight-test planning, data analysis, and post-flight validation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related field.
• 5–7+ years of professional aerospace engineering experience, including delivery of projects from concept through design, analysis, testing, and implementation.
• Demonstrated experience in hypersonic aerodynamic design, vehicle shaping, performance optimization, and computational or experimental high-speed analysis.
• Strong understanding of hypersonic flight, atmospheric entry, high-speed aerodynamics, aerothermal analysis, aerodynamic heating, high-temperature gas dynamics, and TPS evaluation.
• Experience with CFD, aerothermal, and aerodynamic tools; relevant tools include STAR-CCM+, FUN3D, LociCHEM, US3D, CFD++, DATCOM, OpenVSP, MATLAB, and Python.
• Must be a U.S. person and authorized to work in the United States. Strong analytical, documentation, communication, mentoring, and technical leadership skills are required.

Nice to have

• Hands-on heat-shield and TPS design, material selection, architecture trades, recession and insulation analysis, and mission-heating margin definition.
• Experience with both hypersonic atmospheric flight and atmospheric entry or re-entry aerothermal problems.
• Experience establishing ground test capability such as arcjet, plasma, or other high-enthalpy material testing, or working with flight-test aerothermal instrumentation.
• Defense or dual-use high-speed vehicle development and production-minded design experience.
• Advanced degree focused on hypersonics, aerothermodynamics, or TPS.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, multidisciplinary engineering environment with startup agility.
• Equity participation and performance-based incentives.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Retirement savings and paid time off.
• Funding for continuing education, training, and career growth.