Head of Aircraft Engineering — End-to-End eVTOL Lead

Apera; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Apera in Mountain View, CA, is seeking a Chief Engineer to own the aircraft development programme and shape the engineering organisation from the ground up. This hands-on leadership role sits at the intersection of flight sciences, propulsion, structures, and systems integration, with direct collaboration to the founder.

The successful candidate will drive end-to-end technical decisions, balance trade-offs across disciplines, and guide the project from subscale development to a full-scale

Qualifications

• Meaningful ownership of an aircraft development programme.
• Experience in clean-sheet or early-stage aircraft development.
• Multidisciplinary aircraft-level decision-making.
• Experience moving from concept/design into prototype, integration or flight test.
• Ability to challenge specialists outside your deepest discipline.
• Strong technical judgement with incomplete information.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment.

Responsibilities

• Define the aircraft and the engineering organisation around it.
• Own the aircraft-level technical baseline and guide multidisciplinary trade-offs.
• Turn flight-test evidence into engineering decisions for the programme.
• Lead the programme from subscale development toward a full-scale aircraft.
• Operate hands-on by design in a small, early-stage environment.
• Collaborate closely with suppliers, prototypes and testing teams to build the technical team.

Job description

Apera in Mountain View, CA, is seeking a Chief Engineer to own the aircraft development programme and shape the engineering organisation from the ground up. This hands-on leadership role sits at the intersection of flight sciences, propulsion, structures, and systems integration, with direct collaboration to the founder.

The successful candidate will drive end-to-end technical decisions, balance trade-offs across disciplines, and guide the project from subscale development to a full-scale