Manager, Environmental Control Systems & Thermal Engineering (R6306)

Job Description:

What you'll do:

People Leadership and Development: Manage, mentor, and develop individual contributors; set goals, give feedback, support growth, and build a high-trust, high-standard team.
Team Planning and Execution: Set priorities, ownership, staffing, and execution cadence for X-BAT and Group 5 work; remove blockers and manage dependencies.
Technical Direction and Review: Guide ECS and thermal architecture, trades, and design reviews across thermal environments, cooling, airflow, ducting, heat exchangers, fluid circuits, and related hardware.
Requirements, Risk, and Maturity: Set expectations for requirements, reviews, verification, risk management, configuration control, and design release through flight-ready hardware.
Vehicle Integration and Interfaces: Resolve interfaces with structures, propulsion, avionics, EWIS, payloads, manufacturing, systems engineering, and test teams.
Test and Flight Readiness: Lead component, qualification, ground, and flight test planning; ensure data, anomaly resolution, and corrective actions support hardware delivery.
Hardware and Suppliers: Set expectations for components, specifications, SOWs, supplier reviews, prototype builds, and acceptance activities.
Hands-On Technical Leadership: Engage in first-principles analysis and root-cause investigations, coach engineers, and unblock complex technical problems.
Communication and Accountability: Represent the team in program and engineering reviews; communicate decisions, risks, progress, resources, and dependencies.

Required qualifications:

Clearance required: US Citizens Only & Must have an Active Secret or higher clearance.
Experience: 8+ years in aerospace environmental control systems, thermal engineering, fluid systems, or comparable aircraft mechanical systems development.
People Leadership: Experience directly managing and developing individual contributors, including setting expectations, giving feedback, and supporting career growth.
Education: B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Core Fundamentals: Deep understanding of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and aircraft thermal management.
System Development Leadership: Ability to guide architecture, requirements, analysis, design, integration, and verification through hardware delivery.
Technical Judgment and Communication: Sound engineering judgment, early risk identification, and clear communication across technical and program teams.
Team Culture: Record of working hard, building trust, maintaining high standards, and treating others with kindness.

Preferred qualifications:

Experience managing engineers on UAV, autonomous aircraft, fighter, tactical aircraft, or other high-performance aerospace programs.
Experience with Group 5 aircraft, aircraft-level thermal management, ECS, or integrated fluid and thermal systems.
Hands-on experience with thermal and fluid testing, instrumentation, data acquisition, model correlation, or flight-test troubleshooting.
Experience with first-principles analysis, fluid-thermal network modeling, CFD, or thermal-analysis tools such as FloEFD, STAR-CCM+, Thermal Desktop, Amesim, or Flowmaster.
Familiarity with aerospace environmental, qualification, and airworthiness practices, including MIL-STD-810, MIL-HDBK-516, RTCA DO-160, and SAE AIR or ARP standards.
Experience with aerospace suppliers, COTS or custom components, technical specifications, SOWs, and prototype or vehicle-level test setups.
Experience hiring, onboarding, and scaling a small engineering team in a rapid R&D or production environment.
Advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline.