Certification Engineer

Dawn Aerospace; Christchurch (VA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Dawn Aerospace in the United States is seeking an experienced Certification Engineer to own safety cases for unmanned, rocket-powered flight operations.

You will work with Flight Operations and Systems Engineering to develop risk assessments, mitigate hazards, and engage with civil authorities to gain certification.

This role offers hands-on influence across teams and requires practical, proactive leadership in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Experience leading safety-critical certification efforts for unmanned operations.
• Ability to translate high-level safety objectives into concrete requirements and tests.
• Familiarity with aviation authority processes and risk mitigations.

Responsibilities

• Manage Certification Projects and liaise with Civil Aviation Authorities and external stakeholders.
• Develop Operational Risk Assessments and Safety Cases for unmanned operations.
• Derive mitigations in the operations domain with cross-functional teams.
• Provide independent Safety Observer oversight of flight operations.

Skills

Certification project management

UAS operations safety case development

Civil aviation rules & procedures

Job description

Join us in developing a remotely piloted reusable spaceplane that combines the demanding performance of a rocket with the reusability of an aircraft.

We're looking for an experienced Certification Engineer who enjoys taking ownership of risks and mitigations in the flight operations domain. We need someone who can analyse the safety risks of complex UAS operations, interpret high level safety objectives, and work with engineering and flight operations teams to establish our operations are safe.

You will directly contribute to the safety case that demonstrates frequent unmanned, rocket-powered flights to space are safe. If you want a narrow, heavily structured role, this is probably not for you. We are looking for someone practical, organised, and capable of taking ownership in a fast-moving environment.

This role works within the Spaceplane Certification Team reporting to the Certification Team Lead. You will not have a team working directly for you but will have a high level of interaction with the Flight Operations and Systems Engineering teams.

What You’ll Do

Manage Certification Projects and Liaison with Civil Aviation Authorities and External Stakeholders

• Engage directly with authorities to come to agreement on acceptable risk mitigations.
• Where there is disagreement in acceptable approaches to safety, resolve in a manner that builds trust and enables progress.
• Work closely with Flight Operations and Systems Engineering teams to provide requirements, safety objectives, set expectations, provide guidance and review their work packages.
• Ensure certification deliverables are provided when needed, and work with the authorities to enable review to occur efficiently.

Develop Operational Risk Assessment and Safety Case

• Systematically identify all risks associated with unmanned aircraft operations using industry practices (JARUS SORA).
• Decide the mitigations, standards and practices to be implemented by Design and Flight Operations teams to meet JARUS SORA operation safety objectives in the flight operations domain (i.e. OSO#01, #08, #09, #13, #16 - #20).
• Take end-to-end ownership of operational constraints and mitigations to protect the public (e.g. special-use-airspace, marine navigation warnings, surveillance).
• Ensure safety case mitigations are implemented and verified across the organisation and are documented in a succinct and clear manner for certification.
• Develop and maintain the exposition and supporting procedures so the documents remain an accurate reflection of Dawn’s practices.

Derive Appropriate Mitigations in the Operations Domain

• Build relationships and manage requirements for external stakeholders that contribute to the safety case (e.g. aerodrome operators, air traffic service providers, aeronautical information service providers, training organisations).
• Develop flight test and operations risk management practices that ensure adequate safety is achieved, where there is technical uncertainty during flight test, or flight of new payloads or mission profiles.
• Provide leadership and mentorship, particularly to those on the flight operations team, on acceptable standards and practices for procedure validation, crew training, human factors, and human-machine interface assessments.
• Establish requirements for detect and avoid systems within the operating airspace, working with engineering teams to influence their design and ensure safety objectives are met.

Safety Observer

• Provide independent monitoring of flight operations to ensure compliance with established procedures.
• Identify unsafe conditions and safety risks during pre-flight and post-flight activities, working with teams to correct or mitigate them.
• Manage crew duty, and rest periods and mitigate human factors errors during flight operations.
• Ensure the emergency response plan is adequate and lead the response crew that attends the site of an aircraft emergency.

What We’re Looking For

You are an experienced certification engineer, flight test engineer, flight safety specialist, or launch safety official with experience in UAS operations or rocket launch operations who provides leadership and influence across a wide range of engineering and operations disciplines.

You enjoy working embedded with flight operations and engineering teams and are comfortable presenting succinct safety cases for a complex operation.

You take often vague safety objectives, and in a use-case where there is little-to-no precedence, can provide clear direction to the Dawn teams on how to meet them.

We expect applicants to bring strong experience in at least two or three of the following areas:

• Certification project management in safety-critical applications.
• Unmanned aircraft operations safety case development in Medium or High-risk categories.
• Civil aviation rules, airspace designation, and flight procedures.
• Launch safety and launch licensing.
• Quality management and/or safety management systems.

What Makes You Successful

• You are highly motivated to solve complex safety risk challenges.
• Comfortable balancing trade-offs in risk across technical, aviation safety, commercial, schedule domains.
• You can work well with a diverse team across flight operations and engineering.
• You take on feedback from peers, regulators and external agencies, and can adapt approaches to your work accordingly.
• You take ownership of high-level objectives, motivate and lead the team to deliver on them.
• You are creative in paths to certification, leveraging industry standards where needed but finding better methods where possible.

Why Join Us?

This is an opportunity to help develop a first-of-its-kind aerospace vehicle operating at the intersection of aviation and spaceflight.

You’ll have genuine ownership of critical vehicle functions, work alongside highly capable engineers, and help solve technical challenges that don't exist anywhere else in the industry. Your work will directly influence how we demonstrate safety, reliability, and operational readiness as we take the vehicle from development into routine operations.

Diversity & Inclusion

At Dawn Aerospace, we believe that diverse teams build better solutions. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences are valued and supported to do their best work.

About Dawn Aerospace

Dawn Aerospace is a space transportation company with a purpose.
Our mission is to enable the next generation of space users by providing more sustainable and scalable ways to access and move around in space. We believe this access, in the form of a transmission network, will fundamentally change what’s possible from space. We currently focus on three areas of space transportation:

• In-space propulsion
  We're a leading supplier of turnkey green propulsion systems for various classes of satellites. Our systems utilise safe, accessible propellants and we have over 170 of these propulsion units on more than 40 operational satellites already. A further 200 units are in production.
• In-space servicing
  Coupled with our propulsion expertise, we are ensuring that our customers' satellites are refuellable. In the coming years, Dawn will offer a refueling service to enable life extension of customer satellites. This new market is aligned with our sustainability goal to ensue a clean and safe space for everyone!
• Spaceplane
  We are developing the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever to take off from a runway, combining the extreme performance of rocket propulsion with the reusability of conventional airplanes to enable high-frequency, low-cost access to sub-orbital space.

Our international teams are distributed across four locations: the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, and the USA.