Principal Turbomachinery Engineer

Barber-Nichols (BN) is a leading provider of custom turbo machinery for the Defense, Aerospace, Cryogenics and Energy industries. Our company is made up of people that are at the top of their game. And we are working with customers who are at the top of their game. Together, we help our customers revolutionize their markets and build amazing relationships with them in the process.

The Principal Engineer serves as a technical expert who ensures the proper turbo machinery trades against customer needs are properly evaluated to ensure the end product meets our customer’s system level objectives. Broad expertise across all technical aspects of turbo machinery allows the Principal Engineer to apply intensive and diversified knowledge of engineering principles and practices in broad areas of assignments.

Recent projects our team has led include successfully testing a molten salt pump for next generation nuclear reactors on FLiBe, delivering a blower that will ride on NASA’s Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan, development of a new oxygen fan and water pump for NASA, and successfully developing propellant turbopumps for multiple flight vehicles.

• Project owner for early trades/conceptualization efforts for the most challenging turbo machinery programs at Barber-Nichols.
• Familiarity with sizing and building models for both Rankine and Brayton Cycles to inform customer system design and strategy.
• In-depth understanding of down-selecting core technologies to inform early turbo machinery concept and project strategies.
• Proven track record of being able to transition from early trades/conceptualization to project execution team.
• Ability to provide strong technical contributions and enhance our core capabilities around key technology enablers for clean-sheet turbo machinery designs.
• Aero/Hydrodynamic Design (Turbines, compressors, fans, blowers, full emissions and partial emission pumps)
• Bearings (Roller Element – Grease, Oil, Dry-film lube, Hydrodynamic, Hydrostatic, and foil bearings)
• Seals (Elastomeric, Spring Energized, C-ring, Mechanical Face Seals, etc.)
• Motors (Permanent Magnet and Induction)
• Systems/Application Engineering
• Take ownership and/or mentor more junior team members to meet all customer requirements, including technical capability, schedule milestones, and budgetary constraints on Barber-Nichols most challenging projects.
• Review project plans, project risk assessments, and project engineering deliverables. Act as a Project Engineer Approver during design review process.
• Provide technical guidance to programmatic activities such as creating and maintaining project budgets, schedules, and formal design reviews.
• Lead the technical engineering effort and apply engineering principles to define and analyze the design with minimal oversight.
• Collaborate with the Controller and Rotating Equipment development teams to ensure sub-system are optimized through verification and qualification

• Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent combination of education and experience working in high aptitude manufacturing environment.
• Minimum fifteen years related experience focused on turbo machinery clean-sheet design
• In-depth understanding of bearing technologies and down-selection/analysis of bearing system will be heavily weighted in the down selection of the chosen candidate.
• Proven rotating machinery expertise and experience with associated systems
• Comprehensive understanding of rotating machinery design, analysis, test, and troubleshooting.
• Comprehensive understanding in the following applicable areas of turbo machinery electromechanical design:
• Mechanical (Aero/hydro, bearings, seal)
• Permanent Magnet Motor Design
• Rotor dynamics / Vibrations

• Must be willing to work overtime as required
• Travel up to 10% of working time.

• Experience in Ansys and Solidworks.
• Applicable training certificates (FEA, CFD, etc) and successful completion of the Engineer-in-Training (E.I.T.) or Fundamentals of Engineering (F.E.) are desirable.
• A Colorado State Professional Engineer License is desirable.

• To perform this job successfully, an individual should…