Process Engineer, Configuration Management

Process Engineer

Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand;
Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation.

You think of configuration management as a design discipline, not paperwork — the thing that makes it possible to trust exactly what was built, tested, and released, and to change it with confidence instead of guesswork. You have worked across civil and/or military programs, you know how ANSI/EIA-649 and its aerospace and defense counterparts translate into working process, and you enjoy the part of the job most engineers skip past: turning a good CM standard into something every team actually follows.

You don't need a fully built process handed to you to be effective — you can walk into an existing standard, quickly spot what isn't working, and start fixing it.

We're looking for a Process Engineer to help mature and standardize configuration management across our Technology organization — partnering directly with engineering teams to make sure every piece of released design data and process documentation, civil and military, is identified, controlled, and changed the same rigorous way. Part of this role is near-term: sharpening our current process standards quickly. Part of it is a longer runway: helping chart Merlin's path from file-share-based configuration control today toward a dedicated PLM system.

If you want to shape how a fast-growing aerospace company does CM rather than maintain a process someone else already finished building, this is that role.

Responsibilities:

• Define, standardize, and continuously improve configuration management processes for all released engineering, design, and process data across Merlin's Technology organization, spanning civil and military programs.
• Partner directly with engineering, program, and process assurance teams to apply consistent CM practices for configuration item identification, baselining, release, and change control.
• Help refine Merlin's change control process — including change evaluation criteria, approval routing, and change control board structure — so changes to released data are properly assessed, approved, and traceable.
• Establish and maintain configuration item identification, versioning, and release conventions company-wide so released data is uniquely identified, retrievable, and audit-ready.
• Define retention, archival, and obsolescence practices for configuration items consistent with applicable regulatory and contractual requirements.
• Administer and improve the configuration/PLM tooling used to manage configuration items, including access control, and drive consistent adoption across engineering and program teams.
• Assess Merlin's current configuration control tooling and build the roadmap for evolving it toward a dedicated PLM system as the company scales.
• Train engineering and program teams on configuration management practices to raise process adherence and consistency across the company.
• Apply configuration management principles consistent with civil and military industry standards across the full range of programs and product lines Merlin supports.
• Support improved configuration management of flight test vehicle integration activities.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree engineering or related field with meaningful experience in configuration management within aerospace, defense, or another complex, regulated engineering…