Firestorm Labs
Principal Aerospace Engineer - Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimization
$145K–$215K
San Diego, United States · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Jul 29, 2026
- Experience
- 8+ years with a bachelor’s degree, or 6+ years with a master’s degree.
- Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering or a related field, or a Master’s degree.
- Visa sponsorship
- Requires U.S. Person status (Citizen or Permanent Resident) due to ITAR regulations. Export-control compliance also allows protected individuals or others eligible to obtain required U.S. government authorizations.
About the job
Lead development of an in-house MDAO tool that integrates aircraft discipline models and supports design optimization and vehicle-level trade studies for unmanned aerial systems.
What you'll do
- Architect, develop, and maintain the MDAO framework and integrate discipline analysis modules and parametric geometry pipelines.
- Implement optimization methods, validate model outputs, and execute vehicle trade studies and sizing analyses.
- Coordinate with engineering teams and establish software version-control, testing, documentation, and continuous-integration practices.
What they ask for
- Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering or related field with 8+ years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree with 6+ years.
- Strong foundation in aircraft conceptual/preliminary design, aerodynamics, flight performance, and stability & control.
- Proficiency in Python and experience developing engineering analysis software beyond one-off scripts.
- Hands-on experience with an MDAO framework or demonstrated experience building multidisciplinary analysis pipelines; experience with numerical optimization and design space exploration.
Nice to have
- Master’s or PhD in Aerospace Engineering focused on MDAO, aircraft design, or applied optimization.
- Experience with OpenVSP, AVL, XFOIL, SU2, Fluent, STAR-CCM+, or NASTRAN.
Pay
$145,000 – $215,000 USD (base salary)
Tools
Python, OpenMDAO, ModelCenter, Dakota, SUAVE, OpenVSP, AVL, XFOIL
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative