Chief Engineer
Job description
Chief Engineer at Hypersonica, a European defence technology company, responsible for the technical integrity of flight vehicles from concept through design, integration, test and flight. The role is a senior technical leadership position holding the vehicle as a complete system and making consequential whole-vehicle engineering decisions.
At a glance
- Work mode
- Remote
What you'll do
- Own the technical integrity of Hypersonica's flight vehicles from system concept through design, integration, test and flight
- Define and continuously evolve the overall vehicle architecture, ensuring that mission objectives translate into a coherent physical and functional system
- Act as the senior technical authority across vehicle-level engineering decisions, trade-offs, interfaces and risk
- Ensure GNC, avionics, electronics, software, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal systems, power and payloads work together as a single integrated vehicle
- Drive the definition and decomposition of mission and system requirements, focusing on the requirements that genuinely determine whether the vehicle succeeds
- Own the critical interfaces between systems and resolve technical conflicts when optimisation within one discipline damages performance somewhere else
- Lead major system-level trades around performance, mass, power, thermal constraints, controllability, reliability, manufacturability and operational capability
- Work closely with GNC and avionics teams to ensure sensing, estimation, control, computing, actuation and vehicle dynamics form a robust closed-loop system
- Challenge designs from first principles rather than accepting assumptions because they are conventional or inherited from previous programmes
- Lead technical readiness for major design reviews, integration milestones and flight tests
- Use test and flight data aggressively, turning unexpected behaviour and failures into design improvements rather than paperwork
- Work directly with Manufacturing and AIT to make sure the vehicle being designed can actually be built, integrated, tested and iterated quickly
- Make difficult technical decisions when information is incomplete, balancing engineering rigour with the speed required to deliver breakthrough capability
What we're looking for
- An exceptional multidisciplinary engineer who naturally thinks at system and vehicle level rather than only within a single subsystem
- Deeply technically credible, with a strong foundation in areas such as Systems Engineering, GNC, avionics, flight controls, vehicle architecture or complex aerospace system design
- Experienced taking complex aerospace, defence, space, autonomous or similarly high-consequence systems from concept into real integrated hardware
- Strong in system architecture, requirements, interfaces, integration, verification and technical risk
- Comfortable reasoning about closed-loop vehicle behaviour, including the relationship between vehicle dynamics, sensors, estimation, control, actuators and onboard computing
- Able to understand a difficult technical problem quickly, identify the assumptions that actually matter and drive the team towards an answer
- Experienced making significant engineering trade-offs across multiple disciplines rather than optimising one component in isolation
- Comfortable moving between first-principles technical discussion and major programme-level decisions without losing depth
- Willing to get personally involved when a problem matters; does not need a large team, perfect information or an established process before making progress
- Able to distinguish engineering rigour from engineering bureaucracy
- Confident challenging exceptional specialists in their own disciplines while remaining open enough to change your own mind when the evidence demands it
- Calm when things go wrong, intellectually honest when something is not understood and relentless about finding the real answer
- Motivated by the opportunity to build sovereign European defence capability and comfortable working on systems where the consequences of engineering decisions genuinely matter
Benefits
A company early enough that your decisions will materially shape the vehicles, engineering organisation and technical culture we build
Direct access to the problem; short decision paths, minimal bureaucracy and engineers empowered to solve engineering problems
Daily collaboration with exceptional people across GNC, avionics, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, manufacturing, test and defence
- The opportunity to hold genuine technical ownership of one of Europe's most ambitious defence engineering programmes
- The freedom to challenge convention, build from first principles and move quickly when the evidence supports it
- The resources and ambition to attempt things that would take significantly longer in traditional aerospace organisations
- The opportunity to see your decisions move from a whiteboard, into hardware and ultimately into flight
How to get hired
- 1Apply directly to this role or reach out to Nathan Sweeney, Head of Talent
- 2Every application is reviewed and the company aims to respond to all candidates within two weeks, whether the answer is yes or no
Apply
About Hypersonica
Help Build Europe's Hypersonic Capability
Hypersonica is a small, elite defence technology company working on problems that matter and solving them fast. It is a talent-dense environment where every individual shapes the direction of the company, hiring a small number of exceptional people with broad, deep technical capability, strong judgement, and the ability to operate autonomously.
Mission
To deliver speed, resilience, and technological independence at a pace that sets a new standard, contributing directly to Europe's technological independence.
Key facts
- Defence technology
- Small, elite team
- Hires for talent, not rigid boxes
- Deliberately small, intensely capable, and deeply mission-driven
- Every hire raises the bar
What they value
- Speed
- Resilience
- Technological independence
- Engineering rigour without bureaucracy