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Salary: USD 170,000 - 225,000 / annual
Outpost is an orbital logistics company building reusable Earth-return vehicles (CarryAll) that enable in-space manufacturing, on-orbit warehousing, and rapid global delivery. The company has validated demand through defense and civil agreements with a growing pipeline of government and commercial customers.
The Senior Aerothermal Analysis Engineer will own the aerothermal environment definition for CarryAll across its complete flight envelope, from early trade studies through flight operations. This role combines high-fidelity CFD, engineering-level methods, and test data to create the database that drives thermal protection system (TPS) sizing, structural design, and trajectory planning. Because CarryAll is designed for multiple flights, the aerothermal environments must account for how thermal protection systems hold up across many reentry cycles, not just a single mission.
Key responsibilities include:
- Owning aerothermal environment definition for CarryAll across its full flight envelope, from Mach 25 descent through subsonic landing, keeping environments current as design evolves
- Setting up and running high-enthalpy CFD at key trajectory points, capturing thermochemical non-equilibrium effects
- Bridging gaps between CFD points using fast engineering heating methods to provide credible answers for all trajectories and attitudes without full solves
- Combining CFD, engineering estimates, and ground/flight test results into a single environment product with clearly stated uncertainties and margins
- Collaborating with Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) engineers and hardware owners (TPS, structures, mechanisms) to define environments that set TPS thickness, structural temperatures, and trajectory limits
- Adding custom solver capability when standard tools cannot capture required physics (e.g., US3D subroutines for finite-rate chemistry, ablation products, CarryAll-specific boundary conditions)
- Validating new and existing methods against analytical cases, arc-jet tests, wind tunnel tests, and flight data
- Automating environment generation and delivery to keep pace with design iterations
- Managing and maintaining compute resources
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering
- 5+ years of experience in hypersonic, supersonic, reentry, or rocketry aerothermodynamic analysis
- Experience running high-enthalpy flow solvers (FUN3D, US3D, DPLR, or similar)
- Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.15, or eligible to obtain required U.S. authorizations
