About Mach Industries
Founded in 2023, Mach Industries is a rapidly growing defense technology company focused on developing next-generation autonomous defense platforms. At the core of our mission is the commitment to delivering scalable, decentralized defense systems that enhance the strategic capabilities of the United States and its allies. With a workforce of approximately 350 employees, we operate with startup agility and ambition.
Our vision is to redefine the future of warfare through cutting-edge manufacturing, innovation at speed, and unwavering focus on national security. We are dedicated to solving the next generation of warfare with lethal systems that deter kinetic conflict and protect global security.
The Role
Responsible Engineer for aeroelastic analysis and for the design, execution, and analysis of static and dynamic tests that verify structural strength, load paths, stiffness, and dynamic characteristics of unmanned aircraft platforms. The engineer owns structural-dynamic and aeroelastic models, plans and runs the tests that validate those models, and closes the loop between prediction and measurement.
The role supports the full product development cycle by ensuring that structural performance, strength, stiffness, fatigue life, flutter margins, and dynamic characteristics are predicted, measured, correlated, and validated against certification and design requirements. The engineer works with design, stress, flight sciences, flight controls, manufacturing, and instrumentation to produce airworthy structure and a flight-cleared envelope.
Key Responsibilities
Own structural-dynamic and aeroelastic finite element models from concept through flight clearance, including mass, stiffness, and damping of the airframe, control surfaces, stores, and landing gear.
Establish aeroelastic design criteria, flutter and divergence margins, and loads assumptions for new and modified configurations.
Perform normal-modes, static aeroelastic, flutter, and aeroelastic loads analyses, and deliver design loads and clearance recommendations to stress, design, and flight sciences.
Assess control-surface mass balance, freeplay, stiffness, and relevant failure modes, and recommend design changes that restore required flutter margins.
Support configuration trades with aeroelastic screening and recommend stiffness or mass-balance changes that keep the design flutter-free.
Develop static, modal, and aeroelastic test plans, procedures, load schedules, instrumentation layouts, and risk assessments.
Design structural test fixtures, reaction frames, load-introduction systems, and actuator/whiffletree arrangements that simulate aerodynamic, landing, propulsion, and operational loads.
Specify, install, and operate structural instrumentation, including strain gages, displacement transducers, load cells, inclinometers, accelerometers, and thermocouples.
Conduct proof, limit, ultimate, and component qualification tests, and plan and execute Ground Vibration Tests and related modal surveys.
Support aeroelastic and flutter-model wind-tunnel tests and flight-flutter testing, including test-point definition, excitation methods, go/no-go criteria, and data reduction.
Monitor structural response during testing, assess safety and test progress in real time, and reduce measured data to verify compliance with design requirements.
Correlate measured loads, strains, deflections, frequencies, and mode shapes with analytical predictions and update models accordingly.
Prepare analysis, test, flutter, and certification documentation suitable for airworthiness and customer review.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related engineering discipline.
Minimum 3–8 years of experience in aircraft structural dynamics, aeroelasticity, flutter, modal testing, or related aerospace analysis and test.
Demonstrated ability to perform and interpret structural-dynamic and aeroelastic analyses, including normal…