Aircraft Performance Engineer

JetZero•Long Beach, CA

1d•$150,000 - $180,000

About The Position

JetZero is developing a blended-wing body aircraft designed to use up to 50% less fuel and accommodate zero-emission hydrogen propulsion. The Aircraft Performance Engineer will develop, maintain, and validate aircraft and propulsion performance models for design, simulation, and flight testing. The role owns the engine performance model and supports in-flight thrust determination, engine-model calibration, performance analysis, and flight-test data reduction. Working within Flight Sciences, the engineer collaborates with Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Flight Test, Systems, and Performance teams to establish consistent thrust and drag accounting and validate engine and aircraft performance.

Requirements

Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
Strong experience in gas turbine engine performance and aircraft propulsion integration.
Demonstrated experience developing or using engine cycle/performance models and interpreting engine decks or OEM propulsion data.
Experience with in-flight thrust determination or flight-test propulsion performance analysis.
Strong understanding of turbofan engine performance, including gross thrust, ram drag, net thrust, corrected parameters, fuel flow, atmospheric corrections, and installation effects.
Strong understanding of aircraft performance, aerodynamics, propulsion-airframe integration, and aircraft energy methods.
Experience analyzing and correlating ground-test, engine-test, simulation, and flight-test data.
Proficiency with MATLAB and Python, and experience developing engineering analysis tools and automated data-reduction methods.
Familiarity with aircraft data acquisition, instrumentation, telemetry, and flight-test data processing.
Strong analytical skills and demonstrated ability to solve problems across aerodynamic, propulsion, and flight-test disciplines.
Excellent technical communication and documentation skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience conducting in-flight thrust determination on transport-category aircraft or in flight-test programs.
Experience with engine performance tools such as NPSS, GasTurb, OEM engine decks, or equivalent proprietary engine-modeling environments.
Experience correlating engine-deck predictions against measured engine parameters such as N1/N2, EGT/TGT, fuel flow, pressure, temperature, and aircraft flight conditions.
Familiarity with thrust bookkeeping and drag accounting, including separating installed propulsion effects from aerodynamic drag.
Experience with flight-test techniques for determining aircraft drag, thrust, climb performance, and cruise performance.
Understanding of measurement uncertainty, parameter identification, sensitivity analysis, and statistical/model-correlation methods applied to flight-test data.
Experience with Part 25 aircraft performance certification and certification flight testing.
Experience with unconventional configurations, including blended-wing body aircraft and highly integrated propulsion installations.
Familiarity with aircraft mission/performance simulation and multidisciplinary performance optimization.
Ability to use AI to efficiently develop tools and assist with documentation.

Responsibilities

Develop, maintain, and validate aircraft and propulsion performance models for design, simulation, and flight test.
Own the engine performance model, covering thrust, fuel flow, efficiency, bleed and power extraction, atmospheric and installation effects, and operating limits throughout the flight envelope.
Develop methods for in-flight thrust determination using engine parameters, aircraft state data, aerodynamic models, and flight-test measurements.
Calibrate and correlate engine models against OEM performance data, ground-test data, and flight-test results.
Analyze propulsion and aircraft flight-test data to determine installed thrust, drag, excess thrust or power, specific fuel consumption, and overall aircraft performance.
Collaborate with Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Flight Test, Systems, and Performance teams to establish consistent thrust and drag accounting methodologies.
Conduct aircraft performance analyses covering takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, landing, range, payload, fuel burn, and reserves.
Develop flight-test performance-reduction tools and processes, including atmospheric normalization, data filtering, uncertainty assessment, and model correlation.
Support the definition of flight-test procedures and instrumentation requirements to validate engine and aircraft performance.