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Salary: USD 152,800 - 227,600 / annual
Archer Technologies is building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft designed to carry four passengers with minimal noise, advancing sustainable air mobility. As an Aerodynamics/Performance Engineer, you will play a key role in the conceptual design phase of a next-generation eVTOL aircraft.
Your primary responsibilities include conceptually sizing primary aerodynamic surfaces (wing, tail/empennage) for tiltrotor/eVTOL configurations against mission requirements across different use cases. You will use low-fidelity aerodynamic tools such as AVL, OpenVSP, or VSPAERO, combined with handbook methods (Hoerner, Roskam) to build the vehicle's drag polar across the flight envelope.
You will trim the aircraft across representative flight conditions—hover, transition, and cruise—and generate trim lines and schedules. You'll estimate vehicle performance metrics including range, endurance, speed, and climb rates by integrating aerodynamic and propulsion data. Conducting mission-level performance analysis across representative use cases (payload-range trades, hover ceiling, best-range/best-endurance speeds) will inform vehicle-level sizing and configuration trades.
Collaboration is central to this role. You will provide aerodynamic feedback into vehicle-level configuration trades regarding surface sizing, control effectiveness, and stability margins. Working closely with vehicle and powertrain architects, you'll help close overall vehicle performance against mission requirements.
Required qualifications include conceptual aerodynamic design experience using low-fidelity tools, strong grounding in handbook-based aerodynamic sizing methods, trim and flight mechanics analysis across hover/transition/cruise regimes, and vehicle performance estimation methodologies. Desired experience includes tiltrotor and rotorcraft aerodynamics, CFD solvers (NASA codes, StarCCM+, Fluent, OpenFOAM), rotorcraft comprehensive analysis tools (RCAS, CAMRAD II), and proficiency in Python or MATLAB for data reduction and analysis.
