Senior Build Engineer, Airframe Composites Manufacturing

ABOUT US:

Astro Mechanica is a vertically integrated aerospace company developing a scalable technology platform to power critical infrastructure, mission operations, and the future of flight. We apply aerospace engineering and quality standards across our products, delivering high performance, reliability, and efficiency for the most demanding operating environments. Astro Mechanica is backed by leading venture and strategic investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Giant Step Capital, United Airlines Ventures, and Voyager Ventures.

We’re a team of passionate engineers dedicated to advancing aerospace. We’re generalists with specialist depth, united by a flat structure and a shared obsession with building things that work well. We move fast, stay pragmatic, and let engineering excellence speak louder than hierarchy.

You're an engineer with a solid understanding of composite materials and manufacturing techniques, able to rapidly develop a manufacturing process from the ground up to turn engineering data into real hardware. You thrive in a hands-on, interdisciplinary environment where seamless collaboration with design, production, quality, supply chain and all other supporting teams is critical to achieving success. You're excited about building an aircraft manufacturing line from scratch and partnering closely with our manufacturing leaders to build a next-generation aircraft factory.

• Help stand up Astro Mechanica's airframe manufacturing operation from scratch, including facilities, workflows, tooling concepts, equipment and consumables needs, with a focus on both rapid implementation and future scalability

• Work directly with the airframe engineering and design teams to translate designs, analyses, and requirements into executable manufacturing plans

• Support and coordinate layup, bonding, curing, trimming, assembly, and rework activities to meet aggressive development milestones

• Establish and continuously improve manufacturing processes, build sequences, tooling approaches, and process documentation

• Maintain strong presence on production floor to drive builds and resolve issues

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Design, Tooling, Quality, and Production teams to ensure manufacturability and smooth execution

• Create manufacturing instructions and support development of internal processes specifications

• Design tools and fixtures directly or via collaboration with internal tool design team or contractors (Also support management of tool schedule and delivery to factory and setup)

• Be responsible for quality inspection of the products you will produce

• Collaborate with suppliers to develop processes, procure composite parts and materials

• Perform first article inspections to ensure initial builds meet dimensional and quality standards

• Seek out new manufacturing techniques and technologies that will increase manufacturing throughput and quality

• 7+ years of experience in high variability composite manufacturing, including prototyping and airframe fabrication

• Experience working with composite materials and processes (prepreg layup, wet layup, bonding, curing, trimming, repair, drilling and fastening)

• Experience developing manufacturing processes for complex composite layups and/or aerostructure assemblies from the ground up

• Experience working with metallic airframe components and composite-to-metal interfaces

• Experience building or scaling manufacturing operations, labs, or shops in a development or flight hardware environment

• Experience mentoring and partnering with technicians

• Experience working directly from engineering drawings, ply books, CAD models, and evolving build definitions

• Strong project management skills

• Proficiency in at least one…