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Hypersonica is building Europe's hypersonic defence capability with a small, elite team focused on solving hard problems at speed. This role offers the opportunity to own aerodynamic analysis of hypersonic vehicles across the full lifecycle—from early concept shaping through flight test.
You will perform aerodynamic design and trade studies to shape vehicle configurations in close collaboration with Systems, Structures, and Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) teams. Your responsibilities include running computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations alongside fast engineering-level methods to support rapid design iterations, developing and maintaining aerodynamic databases covering forces, moments, and control effectiveness across the flight envelope, and providing aerodynamic and aerothermal loads as inputs to structural, thermal, and flight dynamics analyses.
You will plan, specify, and support wind tunnel test campaigns, then use results to validate and refine predictions. A key part of the role is correlating predictions with ground and flight test data, feeding lessons learned back into design and tools. You'll contribute to developing in-house aerodynamic tools and simulation workflows, and document methods, assumptions, and results to ensure traceability and configuration control.
Hypersonica's philosophy is to hire exceptional people with broad, deep technical capability and strong judgment who can operate autonomously. The role evolves based on the individual; if you've achieved what others said was impossible or bring a unique skill combination, they want to hear from you.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or related discipline; postgraduate qualification in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics is a plus
- Hands-on experience taking aerodynamic analysis from concept through to test or flight
- Strong grounding in compressible aerodynamics and high-speed flow
- Experience with CFD tools (e.g., Ansys Fluent, STAR-CCM+, OpenFOAM, SU2), including meshing, setup, and critical assessment of results
- Programming skills (e.g., Python or MATLAB) for automation, data processing, and building aerodynamic models
- Experience with wind tunnel testing or flight test data analysis is a strong advantage
- Comfortable making sound engineering judgments with incomplete data in fast-moving, prototype-heavy environments
