Chief Engineer

REGENT • North Kingstown, RI

2d • Onsite

About The Position

At REGENT, we’re on a mission to revolutionize regional transportation between coastal cities. We're not just building vehicles, we're creating a new category of transportation: the Seaglider. These groundbreaking wing-in-ground-effect craft travel just above the water’s surface, combining the speed of an airplane with the low operating costs of a boat. Capable of 180 miles at 180 mph on today's battery tech (and up to 400 miles with next-gen batteries), Seagliders will unlock fast, affordable, and sustainable coastal transit for passengers and cargo - connecting cities, islands, and communities like never before.
Backed by leading investors and powered by a team of passionate, forward-thinking engineers, builders, and operators, we’re now scaling from a breakthrough prototype to full production - and building the team to make it happen.
Role Overview
As Chief Engineer, you will be the vehicle-level technical authority for REGENT’s Viceroy Seaglider program- the single person responsible for the coherence, integration, and technical integrity of the entire vehicle system.
This is not a functional management role. It’s the role that sits across the disciplines- spanning structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, systems, and controls - and ensures that every design decision, interface, and assumption fits together into a vehicle that works. You will partner directly with the CTO and Program Manager, driving the vehicle toward PDR and CDR with a clear and defensible technical picture.
You’ll lead cross-functional integration reviews, adjudicate trade studies, and resolve interface conflicts that no single discipline can own. You’ll be the person who ensures that Viceroy’s design is not just technically sound in each discipline, but coherent and certifiable as a system.
Success means the program operates from a single, authoritative technical baseline—understood by every functional lead, credible to certification stakeholders, and ready to support PDR, CDR, and certification. It also means serving as a trusted technical leader and mentor: strengthening engineering judgment, guiding cross-functional decision-making, and helping teams solve hard problems with clarity and rigor. If you’re energized by building something genuinely new and operating at the center of a complex, fast-moving program, we’d love to meet you.

Requirements

• Vehicle-Level Integration Experience: Deep experience in aerospace engineering, including significant time serving as a Chief Engineer, Lead Engineer, or in a vehicle-level integration role on a program that successfully progressed through major design gates (PDR, CDR, or equivalent).
• Track Record of Cross-Functional Technical Decision-Making: Demonstrated experience resolving interface conflicts, leading vehicle-level trade studies, and making binding design decisions that span multiple disciplines.
• Program Gate Experience: Direct involvement taking a vehicle development program through CDR (or equivalent) - clear understanding of what design maturity, analysis completeness, and documentation standards are required at each gate.
• Broad Technical Fluency: Deep enough across structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, systems, and controls to interrogate each discipline’s assumptions and integration interfaces - and challenge them when they don’t fit the system.
• Familiarity with Certification and Qualification: Experience working within a certification or airworthiness framework (USCG, Lloyds Register, FAA, EASA, military, or comparable) at the vehicle level - understanding how design choices translate into compliance approaches.
• Fluency in Integration Tools and Artifacts: Proficient with the tools of vehicle-level integration - requirements management, interface control documents, configuration management, mass properties, and design review processes.

Nice To Haves

• Collaborative Team Player: You believe great things happen when teams work together. You partner effectively across engineering, certification, and leadership - bringing clarity to complex discussions, ensuring teams operate from a shared understanding, and driving alignment without sacrificing speed.
• Creative Problem Solver: You thrive on tackling complex, system-level challenges and bringing structure to ambiguity. You don’t just react to gaps - you identify where assumptions, interfaces, or processes are breaking down and build solutions that scale with the program.
• Adaptable & Agile: In a fast-paced, evolving environment, you balance rigor with speed. You know when to add structure and when to simplify - keeping the team moving without losing sight of safety and certification requirements.
• Innovative Mindset: You’re driven by curiosity and a passion for building things that haven’t existed before. You continuously look for ways to raise the bar - for how the program integrates, how decisions get made, and how teams work together.

Responsibilities

• Own Vehicle-Level Technical Integration: Serve as the vehicle-level technical authority for Viceroy. Drive cross-functional integration reviews, resolve interface conflicts between disciplines, and ensure design decisions spanning structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, systems, and controls are coherent, documented, and defensible.
• Drive Design Maturity Toward PDR and CDR: Define what “PDR-ready” and “CDR-ready” mean in terms of design maturity, analysis completeness, risk posture, and documentation. Lead the program’s technical preparation for major design gates.
• Decompose and Control Vehicle-Level Requirements: Own the technical decomposition of vehicle-level specifications into subsystem and discipline-level requirements. Maintain configuration control of the vehicle-level baseline and manage how changes propagate across the system.
• Lead Trade Studies and Technical Decision-Making: Drive the trade studies and technical decisions that span multiple disciplines. Ensure design choices are made with full visibility into system-wide implications - including weight, performance, structural, and certification impacts.
• Define the Certification Technical Strategy: In partnership with the certification team, own the vehicle-level compliance approach - mapping design choices to the certification basis and ensuring technical decisions are structured to support verification.
• Enable Cross-Functional Technical Teams: Partner with functional managers to ensure each discipline has clear interface definitions, consistent assumptions, and the technical direction they need to execute. Enable the next layer of technical leaders to own their domains with confidence.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation including a robust equity incentive plan.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance - we cover 100% of your premiums.
• 401(k) with company matching, so you can plan for the future.
• Generous flexible time off, paid parental leave, and company-wide holiday breaks.
• Relocation packages available for those moving to join our team.
• Daily, free catered lunches
• Learning & professional development opportunities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed