Propulsion Design Office Principal

The Exploration Company; Bordeaux; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

The Exploration Company in Bordeaux is seeking a Propulsion Systems Lead to drive design, analysis, and integration across thermal, structural, and mechanical domains for launch vehicle programs.

You will mentor a multidisciplinary team, conduct design reviews, manage interfaces with vehicle design and systems engineering, and ensure margins meet mass, thermal, and safety targets while delivering on schedule.

Qualifications

• 5+ years hands-on propulsion design experience
• Experience leading small-to-mid-size engineering teams
• Experience across thermal, structural and mechanical domains
• Experience with thermal and structural analyses (Thermal Desktop, ANSYS, NASTRAN)
• Familiarity with CAD environments (CATIA, NX) and design reviews

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of propulsion engineers across multiple disciplines.
• Define scopes, set priorities, and manage workload to meet program milestones.
• Conduct regular design reviews and provide technical direction for career development.
• Drive design-to-requirements traceability and interface management with vehicle design.
• Oversee CAD standards, documentation, BOM, and configuration control.

Skills

Team leadership

Propulsion design

Cross-disciplinary coordination

Design reviews

Communication

Tools

Thermal Desktop

ANSYS

NASTRAN

CATIA

NX

Job description

Here at The Exploration Company, we are building spacecrafts for humanity.

Team Leadership & Engineering Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineers spanning thermal, structural/mechanical, CFD and CAD/design functions, fostering a culture of technical excellence and accountability.
• Define individual scopes of work, set priorities, and manage workload across concurrent design activities to keep the team aligned with program milestones.
• Conduct regular design reviews and one-on-ones, providing clear technical direction and supporting career development within the office.

Propulsion System Design & Technical Ownership

• Making or approving key design decisions on feed or pressure systems, and associated structures.
• Drive design-to-requirements traceability, ensuring system satisfy mass, thermal, and safety margins up to qualification.
• Coordinate with Systems Engineering and Vehicle Design to manage interfaces between the propulsion system and adjacent vehicle subsystems.

Thermal Analysis & Management

• Oversee steady-state and transient thermal analyses of propulsion components, ensuring compliance with temperature limits across all mission phases (ground operations, in-orbit, re-entry).
• Review and approve thermal models, ensuring analytical rigor and correlation with test data.
• Guide the team in identifying test platforms and defining test objectives.

Structural & Mechanical Design

• Direct the mechanical design of propulsion structures, and brackets, ensuring adequate strength, stiffness, and fatigue life under load cases.
• Oversee FEA and hand-analysis efforts to verify structural margins, and lead disposition of any margin concerns or design anomalies.
• Working closely with AIT team to define and validate integration sequences.

CAD, Documentation & Configuration Control

• Define and enforce CAD standards, model maturity gates, and drawing release processes within the design office, ensuring consistency and traceability across the propulsion product tree.
• Oversee the maintenance of the engineering master model and associated bill of materials (BOM), coordinating with PDM/PLM administrators to keep configuration control current.
• Ensure design documentation — including ICDs, engineering drawings, design notes, and specification trees — is complete, reviewed, and baselined on schedule.

Location

You will perform your duties principally at the Company's premises in Bordeaux and may be required to travel from time to time to our company’s premises in Munich in the course of your duties.

What we would love to see from you

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience in propulsion system design for launch vehicles, spacecraft, or space capsules, with direct exposure to liquid propulsion architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to work across thermal, structural, and mechanical domains — you don't need to be the deepest expert in every field, but you can lead and critically review work across all three.
• A track record of managing small-to-mid-size engineering teams in a fast-paced, hardware‑delivery environment, with the ability to develop junior engineers while maintaining technical standards.
• Prior experience running or closely supervising thermal (e.g. Thermal Desktop, ANSYS or equivalent) and structural analyses (e.g. NASTRAN or equivalent), and strong familiarity with CAD environments (CATIA, NX, or equivalent).
• Experience managing complex system‑level trades and interfaces and formal design review processes

Skills And Behaviors

• A hands‑on approach to problem‑solving, combined with a collaborative mindset to work across multidisciplinary teams
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to multitask
• Capability of working autonomously whilst collaborating productively with remote teams
• Positive and flexible attitude in a constantly evolving environment
• Grit to get the job done
• Ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of audiences
• Behaviors consistent with The Exploration Company’s core values of Commitment, Innovation, Trust, Quality, and Teamwork

Why you should join us!

What makes us special here at The Exploration Company and why we think you will enjoy working here is:

• We’re Agile - we make decisions fast whilst keeping our goals and systems in mind
• We’re Open and Collaborative - we are transparent about risks and obstacles, so that we can cooperate to overcome them
• We have a lot of Fun - we refuel our energy knowing we are democratising space. It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity, are YOU up for the challenge?

The Exploration Company is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status.

All offers are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check, which will be subject to the country, role, and project you applied for. By submitting your application, you acknowledge and agree that any offer of employment may be conditional upon successful condition of this check. The Exploration Company partners with Zinc Work Limited located in the UK (Zinc), a third‑party provider, to ensure this process as efficient and transparent as possible. If applicable, you will receive an email from Zinc upon acceptance of your offer with a link to a secure portal where you can provide the required information to Zinc.