Lead MDAO Engineer - UAS Weapons Performance

Zone 5 Technologies; United States; On-site; USD 149,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

401k

Paid time off

Holidays

Job summary

Zone 5 Technologies is seeking an experienced MDAO Lead to join our Weapons Performance team. You will lead multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization efforts that integrate aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and GNC into vehicle-level trade studies for air-launched effects and interceptors.

The role demands a technical leader with an entrepreneurial mindset, mentoring engineers, defining MDAO direction, and ensuring designs are validated against test data.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering.
• 10+ years leading multidisciplinary design in a program-driven environment.
• Experience delivering MDAO efforts to hardware on at least one program of record.
• Experience with OpenMDAO, ModelCenter, or Phoenix Integration pipelines.
• Ability to verify designs across CAD/CFD/FEA toolchains.

Responsibilities

• Lead multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization efforts across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and trajectory models.
• Develop and standardize MDAO methods, tools, and documentation.
• Create automated workflows integrating CAD/CFD/FEA into optimization loops.
• Maintain MDAO architecture docs and develop pipelines (Git, CI/CD).
• Validate designs against wind tunnel, ground, and flight data; lead root-cause investigations.

Skills

Leadership

MDAO

Python

MATLAB

C++

Git

CI/CD

CAD integration

CFD integration

FEA integration

OpenMDAO

ModelCenter

Education

Bachelor's degree in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Tools

SolidWorks

CATIA

Siemens NX

OpenMDAO

ModelCenter/Phoenix Integration

CAMEO

NASTRAN/PATRAN

ANSYS

FUN3D

OVERFLOW

STAR-CCM+

Job description

Zone 5 Technologies is seeking an experienced MDAO Lead to join our Weapons Performance team. You will lead multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization efforts that integrate aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and GNC into vehicle-level trade studies for air-launched effects and interceptors.

The role demands a technical leader with an entrepreneurial mindset, mentoring engineers, defining MDAO direction, and ensuring designs are validated against test data.