Composites Design Engineer

About the Role

Dawn Aerospace aims to revolutionize space transportation with its Aurora spaceplane program—the world's first rocket-powered aircraft designed for rapid reuse to provide frequent and reliable space access. This position involves hands-on design of composite airframe structures that move swiftly from concept through manufacturing, testing, and flight.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop designs for primary and secondary composite structures such as fuselage, wings, control surfaces, and internal supports.
• Create laminate schedules, manufacturing blueprints, tooling ideas, assembly fixtures, and related technical documents.
• Conduct structural sizing, trade-off analyses, and optimize designs using analytical and computational approaches.
• Collaborate closely with manufacturing, testing, and flight teams to ensure designs are feasible, producible, and reliable.
• Provide support during structural testing, certification processes, and flight campaigns.
• Work alongside aerodynamics, systems, avionics, and propulsion engineers to deliver integrated vehicle solutions.
• Contribute to enhancing engineering processes, standards, and methodologies.

Candidate Profile

The ideal engineer enjoys transforming concepts into tangible hardware and thrives under fast-paced conditions. You take accountability for your deliverables, work well across disciplines, and balance technical quality with rapid execution.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• A degree in Aerospace, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or a related discipline.
• Minimum three years of professional experience crafting composite structures within high-performance sectors such as aerospace, aviation, or motorsport.
• Strong expertise in composite materials, laminate theories, and manufacturing techniques.
• Proficiency using CAD tools like CATIA, Siemens NX, or SolidWorks.
• Competence in preparing detailed engineering drawings and managing design document releases.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication capabilities.
• Experience collaborating with external manufacturing suppliers.
• Background in rapid development, prototype, or experimental settings.

Desirable Skills

• Familiarity with aerospace certification, qualification, or flight test programs.
• Experience applying finite element analysis (FEA) for composite structural evaluations.
• Hands-on involvement in composites manufacturing, tooling, or assembly processes.
• Development experience with flight hardware.

Why Join Dawn Aerospace?

• Design real-world hardware that takes flight.
• Contribute to one of the globe’s leading spaceplane developments.
• See your concepts evolve quickly from design stage to flying prototype.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary, high-caliber engineering team.
• Handle challenging technical problems with tangible impact.
• Be part of shaping the future of space transportation.

Diversity and Inclusion

Dawn Aerospace fosters a workplace where diverse backgrounds and perspectives are embraced, ensuring a supportive environment for all employees to perform at their best.

About Dawn Aerospace

The company is dedicated to creating sustainable and scalable solutions to expand space access. Their expertise spans in-space green propulsion, satellite servicing enabling refueling, and their pioneering spaceplane capable of runway takeoff, merging rocket power with airplane reusability for frequent space missions. Teams are located worldwide across the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, and the USA.