Lead, Structural Analysis Engineering (Stress, Fatigue & Damage Tolerance) (Aerospace)

Location: Long Beach, California, United States

Salary: $136,000–$204,000 USD per year

Company

hirify.global develops Terran R launch vehicles, rocket manufacturing systems, and reusable aerospace hardware.

What you will do

• Lead structural integrity, strength, durability, and life-management analyses for flight hardware across component, subsystem, and vehicle levels.
• Define structural analysis methods, requirements, design margins, verification workflows, and best practices for flight-critical hardware.
• Oversee and mentor structural analysts while maintaining direct technical contribution.
• Perform and review static and dynamic stress analyses using finite element models for metallic and additively manufactured structures.
• Develop fatigue-life, crack-initiation, crack-growth, fracture-mechanics, and damage-tolerance predictions.
• Correlate structural and fatigue analyses with qualification, durability, test, and flight data, updating models after anomalies or failures.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in structural analysis, fatigue and damage tolerance, or structural life assessment.
• Experience leading or mentoring a team and independently scoping, executing, reviewing, and defending structural analyses.
• Strong knowledge of static stress analysis, structural mechanics, fatigue and fracture mechanics, and aerospace structural failure modes.
• Proficiency with Nastran, Abaqus, Femap, NASGRO, and AFGROW.
• Experience converting time-domain or spectral loads into fatigue damage and life predictions, plus scripting with Python or MATLAB.

Nice to have

• Master’s or PhD in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering.
• Experience with launch vehicles, reusable aerospace systems, flight-critical hardware, or additive manufacturing structural analysis.
• Familiarity with Elastic-Plastic Fracture Mechanics and structural or fatigue test correlation.
• Experience defining structural design allowables or durability standards for aerospace systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Work spans design, materials, manufacturing, testing, operations, and the full launch-system lifecycle.
• Role offers technical ownership and the opportunity to influence product and program decisions.
• Competitive salary and equity.
• Generous PTO and sick leave, parental leave, and an annual learning and development stipend.