Composites Engineer
External
Reflect-orbital · Hawthorne HqPrepare for this interview
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About the role
As a Composites Engineer, you'll own the engineering, development, and production of our ultra-light deployable composite structures. This role sits at the intersection of design, analysis, and hands-on manufacturing: you'll refine laminate schedules, develop new layup processes, design tooling and fixtures, run experiments, and drive the factory-floor workflows that take a concept from CAD to flight hardware. You will be responsible for improving yield, repeatability, and performance across all composite processes-curing, layup, machining, bonding, inspection, and structural validation-while collaborating closely with design engineering, test, and manufacturing. Your work directly determines the performance of the composite structures we're flying to space in 2025.
Responsibilities
- Own the engineering and process development for all in-house composite structures
- Develop, validate, and optimize laminate schedules, cure cycles, and layup techniques
- Design tooling, molds, fixtures, and inspection methods for thin high-precision composite parts
- Run experiments to characterize materials and processes (fiber alignment, void fraction, cure kinetics, spring-in, etc.)
- Implement manufacturing controls: travelers, process specs, inspection criteria, and QA workflows
- Diagnose and resolve unusual composite manufacturing and structural issues
- Collaborate with technicians to ensure manufacturability and performance alignment
- Support fabrication on the floor-hands-on when needed-to bridge engineering and manufacturing
- Drive continual improvement in surface quality, dimensional tolerance, repeatability, and yield
- Support development and maintenance of capital equipment (ovens, autoclave alternatives, CNC routing for molds, etc.)
- Ideal Qualifications
- 4-6 years of composites engineering experience spanning design, processing, and manufacturing.
- Strong background in composite materials engineering, aerospace structures, or manufacturing engineering
- Experience designing and producing thin high-precision composite laminates (prepreg preferred)
- Hands-on experience with composite processing: layup, cure, debulk, trimming, bonding, inspection
- Experience developing tooling, mold design, or fixture design for composite components
- Familiarity with structural analysis of composite parts (FEA, laminate theory, material allowables)
- Experience setting or improving manufacturing processes, specs, and quality control methods
- Comfort working in fast-paced R&D environments with rapid iteration
- Experience with spacecraft, high-performance deployable structures, or other extreme-environment hardware is a bonus
- Even if you don't meet 100% of the above qualifications, we are likely still interested in hearing from you. Hiring exceptional individuals is our #1 priority, and we believe that exceptional people often have highly unusual backgrounds.
- We are also interested in carving out unique roles for unconventional people that we are excited about working with.
Benefits
Additional Information
At Reflect, you will be expected to move fast, have a lot of ownership and, most importantly, be able to effect change. If this excites you, we are interested in hearing about your best work and accomplishments across any domain and from any points in your life.
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