Director of Certification

Poseidon Aerospace•Alameda, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Poseidon Aerospace is seeking a Director of Certification to own the company’s aircraft certification and airworthiness strategy for its autonomous cargo aircraft. This role involves defining and executing the regulatory pathway, ensuring that engineering, flight test, and operational decisions align with a credible approval strategy and generate meaningful certification evidence. The Director will serve as the primary interface with regulators, structure flight test campaigns, and de-risk future operational approvals. The core focus is to build a clear, executable certification plan and ensure the aircraft is designed, tested, and documented to maintain program velocity and regulatory credibility.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in aircraft certification, airworthiness, or regulatory compliance leadership.
Demonstrated ownership of certification programs involving regulator engagement, certification basis definition, and means of compliance.
Experience aligning engineering development and flight test programs with certification objectives.
Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, first-of-type or novel aircraft environments.
Strong communication skills with the ability to explain certification risk and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience with unmanned aircraft, novel configurations, or autonomy-enabled systems.
Prior experience negotiating special conditions or non-standard certification pathways.
Background working with DERs, ODAs, or equivalent certification partners.
Experience bridging military airworthiness and civil certification expectations.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain Poseidon’s Certification Master Plan, including certification basis, means of compliance, evidence strategy, and phased approval pathways.
Define elements in scope for near-term certification versus deferred or alternative approval paths.
Establish assumptions, risks, and decision gates tied to configuration freeze and test milestones.
Serve as Poseidon’s primary point of contact with the FAA and other relevant authorities.
Lead preparation for regulator engagements, technical briefings, and formal submissions.
Drive resolution of certification issues and alignment on expectations.
Translate regulatory expectations into clear, actionable engineering requirements across structures, propulsion, avionics, autonomy, command and control, and operations.
Ensure certification considerations are incorporated early into system architecture and design decisions.
Establish lightweight but effective compliance tracking and configuration control.
Partner with flight test and engineering teams to align test planning with certification evidence needs.
Distinguish between engineering learning tests and certification-relevant tests to maximize return on test investment.
Define data collection, analysis, and reporting standards for certification use.
Select and manage external certification resources including DERs, consultants, test labs, and conformity support.
Coordinate conformity planning and compliance expectations with suppliers and partners.
Help define the long-term structure of Poseidon’s certification and airworthiness organization.
Mentor and grow internal certification capability as the program scales.