Air Vehicle Chief Engineer — Autonomous Flight Lead

Applied Methods Ltd; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 25,000,000 - 34,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Applied Methods Ltd. in Seattle, WA seeks a Chief Engineer, Air Vehicle Lead to own the vehicle architecture and overall integration across the development lifecycle of autonomous aircraft.

You will work hands-on across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, flight controls, and manufacturing to drive robust, production-ready designs. The role demands leadership in multidisciplinary engineering, system-level trades, and risk management, with a focus on rapid iteration, rigorous design

Responsibilities

• Own the Air Vehicle architecture and performance across the development lifecycle.
• Lead multidisciplinary engineering direction across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, and more.
• Drive system-level trades for performance, weight, range, payload, cost, reliability, manufacturability, schedule, and risk.
• Lead design execution from requirements through preliminary and critical design, hardware release, build, integration, ground and flight tests.
• Stay hands-on with design reviews, problem solving, root-cause investigations and critical design decisions.
• Own technical risk; identify issues that threaten mission success and drive them to closure with engineering rigor.
• Build-test-learn by using prototypes, ground testing, flight testing and real-world data to retire risk.
• Drive integration and ensure interfaces between subsystems are well understood and producible.
• Collaborate with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Operations to enable transition from development to production.
• Mentor engineers and raise the program’s technical capability and accountability.

Job description

Applied Methods Ltd. in Seattle, WA seeks a Chief Engineer, Air Vehicle Lead to own the vehicle architecture and overall integration across the development lifecycle of autonomous aircraft.

You will work hands-on across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, flight controls, and manufacturing to drive robust, production-ready designs. The role demands leadership in multidisciplinary engineering, system-level trades, and risk management, with a focus on rapid iteration, rigorous design