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Lead TPS Engineer

Playa Vista, California, United States

Turning Space into a Transportation Layer for Earth

Who We Are: 

Eras of humanity can often be defined by a dominant transportation mode - horse drawn carriage, ocean faring boats, or aircraft. These were spurred by a small group of people rigorously focused on building technology to achieve faster access to more of the world.  We seek to usher in a new era of humanity defined by universal access to the whole globe free of borders and the presence of a routine way from space to Earth. To do this, we are building highly maneuverable re-entry vehicles that can loiter in orbit before precision landing back on Earth.    

What You’ll Do: 

Inversion’s reentry vehicles are pushing the limits of hypersonic flight. As a Lead Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) Engineer, you will be responsible for bringing up Inversion’s in-house heatshield design and manufacturing teams. You will work alongside Inversion’s aerodynamic, structures, and aerothermal teams to design the flight TPS for Inversion’s lifting-body reentry vehicles and explore ideal TPS solutions for performance, production, and cost. In this role, you will: 

  • Develop, test, and qualify new or refined thermal protection systems for Inversion’s Arc vehicle. 
  • Develop the analysis and design workflow of the flight heatshields for flight vehicles. 
  • Design the production systems and optimize workflows to produce the heatshield materials. 
  • Explore trades between ablatives, ceramics, and other TPS materials. 
  • Lead technical and programmatic architecture for the TPS labs and development timelines. 
  • Work with outside vendors, suppliers, and testing resources to bringing in new materials, capabilities, and processes. 

Required Qualifications: 

  • Bachelor’s degree in Material Science, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, or Chemical Engineering, or equivalent experience in a relevant field with a minimum of 5+ years of professional experience. 
  • 2+ years of experience working with hypersonic reentry thermal protection systems. 
  • Strong understanding of the fundamentals behind aerothermal heating of reentry vehicles, TPS production, and thermal environments of extreme temperature applications. 
  • Experience using Siemens NX or similar CAD software. 
  • This role is onsite at our Playa Vista, California office. 

Desired Qualifications: 

  • Professional experience working with, formulating, or producing ablative TPS. 
  • Experience integrating heatshield materials onto flight vehicles. 

The California annual base salary for this role is currently $130,000-$196,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.  

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ITAR Compliance:
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.  
 
Equal Employment Opportunity:
Inversion provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, veteran status, or disability.  
 
Inversion collects and processes personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws.  If you are a US Job Applicant see the CCPA Privacy Policy Notice for further details.

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