Propulsion Inlet Design Engineer

About the role

Astro Mechanica is a vertically integrated aerospace company building a faster, more connected future. Our mission is to democratize high-speed flight by making supersonic travel flexible, accessible, and sustainable. We believe that rapid, on-demand, point-to-point global mobility will become the new standard for moving people and goods across the planet. To achieve this, we are integrating our advanced airframe and engine technologies-which include Duality™, our proprietary dual-use propulsion system-with a new flight operations model to make supersonic transport as efficient and economical as commercial air travel is today. In the near term, we are developing adaptable, high-speed systems to close aircraft performance gaps for the United States government. 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.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, analysis, and integration of supersonic air inlet systems for highly coupled propulsion-airframe configurations
• Develop and apply analytical methods, reduced-order models, and CFD to guide inlet architecture selection and performance trade studies
• Evaluate inlet performance metrics including mass flow capture, pressure recovery, flow distortion, and operability across the flight envelope
• Work closely with propulsion, airframe, and systems engineers to resolve inlet-engine integration challenges such as bleed systems, secondary flows, and transient behavior
• Provide technical leadership and independent judgment in a fast-paced, multidisciplinary aerospace design environment

Requirements

• A senior aerospace engineer with expertise in inlet design and propulsion-airframe integration for high-speed aircraft
• A self-directed engineer who thrives in ambiguous, highly coupled design environments
• Comfortable owning complex subsystems end-to-end, from early analytical trade studies through detailed CFD and system-level integration
• 5+ years of experience in the design and analysis of air inlet systems
• Experience with supersonic inlet architectures, including axisymmetric spike inlets, two-dimensional inlets, and external/internal compression concepts
• Strong background in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applied to internal flows
• Experience assessing inlet-engine operability and integration issues, including distortion, bleed management, and transient behavior
• Proven ability to work independently and drive technically rigorous solutions in highly coupled propulsion-airframe designs
• THE IDEAL CANDIDATE WOULD
• Be comfortable owning complex subsystems end-to-end, from early analytical trade studies through detailed CFD and system-level integration
• Have demonstrated expertise in the design and analysis of supersonic air inlet systems for high-speed aircraft

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