Structural Engineer

Bulwark Dynamics is building the next generation of autonomous maritime logistics systems for contested environments. Our mission is to develop advanced maritime capabilities that support logistics for the warfighter while creating technologies with applications in disaster relief and other demanding environments.

We are a small, highly technical team where engineers work across the full depth of challenging engineering problems. Individual contributions are visible, professional growth matters, and engineers take ideas from concept through fabrication, testing, and operation.

The Role

Bulwark Dynamics is seeking a Structural Engineer II - Marine Structures to design, build, test, and own structural systems for advanced autonomous marine vessels. You will develop composite and metallic vessel structures, make critical design decisions, validate those decisions through analysis and physical testing, and work directly with fabricators and engineering partners to bring hardware into operation.

This is not a standalone analyst role. Structural analysis and FEA support rapid design decisions, while most of the work centers on hands‑on design, fabrication, integration, troubleshooting, testing, and iteration. The role is best suited to an engineer who wants clean‑sheet ownership, is comfortable with ambiguity, and is motivated by seeing hardware progress from a CAD model to sea trials.

You will work closely with naval architecture, mechanical, actuation, offloading, and autonomy engineering disciplines. The focus is marine structural systems and the way structural loads and failures propagate through the vessel, not hull hydrodynamics.

What You Will Own

• Own vessel structural systems from initial layout and load definition through fabrication, testing, sea trials, and design iteration.
• Develop hull and structural layouts, scantlings and sizing, material selections, attachment strategies, and structural design-for-manufacturing decisions.
• Design lightweight, manufacturable composite and metallic structures, including primary structures, brackets, mounts, foundations, supports, stiffeners, interfaces, and attachment points.
• Evaluate FRP composite laminates and metallic structures, including relevant material behavior, load paths, connections, manufacturing constraints, and failure modes.
• Translate marine and subsystem loads into practical load cases, boundary conditions, design margins, and hardware decisions.
• Analyze static stress, slam and impact loading, shock, fatigue, buckling, weight and center of gravity, stability‑related structural inputs, and structural DFM considerations.
• Use first‑principles calculations and FEA to guide decisions, validate assumptions, and optimize structures for weight and real‑world operating conditions.
• Correlate analysis with physical test results, investigate unexpected behavior or failures, and rapidly improve the design.
• Work directly with technicians, fabricators, suppliers, shipyards, and cross‑functional engineers during composite fabrication, prototype assembly, subsystem integration, and troubleshooting.
• Serve as a core engineering participant during structural tests and sea‑trial operations.
• Document key assumptions, load cases, analyses, test findings, and design decisions with the level of rigor needed to move quickly and responsibly.

What We Are Looking For

• 3+ years of relevant structural, mechanical, marine, naval architecture, or closely related engineering experience. Candidates with greater experience are encouraged to apply.
• Demonstrated end‑to‑end ownership of physical hardware, from structural design through fabrication, integration, test, and iteration.
• Hands‑on experience designing mechanically loaded structures or assemblies, ideally for vessels or other…