Lead Turbomachinery Engineer

Infotel Canada; Cumming (GA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Drove Aeropower is seeking a Lead Turbomachinery Engineer to own the design, manufacture, test, and production of high‑temperature rotating equipment across power and propulsion systems. You will lead cross‑functional efforts from preliminary sizing through failure investigation and production release.

You will design with manufacturing and suppliers, manage turbomachinery suppliers, and drive early risk identification to closure, ensuring hardware is built, balanced, and proven in real-world

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering.
• 10+ years in power-generation, propulsion, turbomachinery, or high-speed rotating equipment development.
• Hands-on design of high-temperature rotating hardware (blades, disks, shafts, impellers, bearings).
• Strong understanding of rotor dynamics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and mechanical design.
• Experience with high-temperature materials, coatings, creep, fatigue, and life prediction.
• End-to-end hardware experience: design through test, failure investigation, redesign, and production.
• Ability to create drawings, tolerance schemes, specifications, test plans, and manufacturing requirements.

Responsibilities

• Define instrumentation and test requirements; run spin tests, overspeed tests, and full-system validation; correlate models with hardware performance.
• Lead root-cause investigations (vibration, thermal distress, bearings, cracking, wear) and drive corrective action through redesign and re-test.
• Design with manufacturing and suppliers for producible, inspectable, and scalable parts using machining, casting, coatings, and balancing.
• Manage critical turbomachinery suppliers and transition prototype hardware into controlled production designs with drawings, specs, and inspection criteria.
• Spot system-level risks early and drive them to closure; ensure rotating equipment remains integrated with other disciplines.

Skills

Rotating equipment design

Rotor dynamics

Vibration analysis

Clear communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering

Job description

About Drove Aeropower

Drove Aeropower builds advanced gas turbine systems for some of the most demanding applications in energy and defense, built around high power density, rapid deployment, and domestic manufacturing. We move with the speed and ownership of a startup while tackling engineering problems normally reserved for much larger organizations.
Own the rotating hardware at the heart of the machine.
We're looking for a Lead Turbomachinery Engineer to own the design, manufacture, test, and production of our critical rotating equipment and high-temperature mechanical components across advanced power and propulsion systems, from preliminary sizing through failure investigation and production release.
You will be responsible for the components that spin, carry load, survive operating conditions, and ultimately determine whether the machine works.

What You Will Own

• Rotating components. Aerodynamic and mechanical design of blades, vanes, impellers, and related flow-path hardware, including component and stage matching.
• Disks, shafts, and rotor architecture. Load paths, torque transmission, bearing arrangement, alignment, thermal growth, couplings, and rotor retention.
• Bearings, seals, and secondary flow. Bearing loads, lubrication, and support concepts; seal architectures, leakage, clearances, and cavity flows.
• High-temperature materials and thermal management. Alloys, coatings, heat treatments, and component cooling strategies.
• Rotor dynamics and vibration. Critical speeds, stability, balance, Campbell diagrams, resonance, and forced response.
• Life and margins. Stress, creep, LCF, HCF, thermal-mechanical fatigue, overspeed, burst margin, component-life predictions, and inspection requirements.

What You Will Do

• Define instrumentation and test requirements, run spin tests, overspeed tests, component rigs, and full-system validation, and correlate analytical models with real hardware performance.
• Lead root-cause investigations (vibration, thermal distress, bearings, cracking, wear, imbalance) and drive corrective action through redesign and re-test.
• Design with manufacturing and suppliers for parts that are producible, inspectable, and scalable across machining, casting, additive manufacturing, coatings, and balancing.
• Manage critical turbomachinery suppliers, and transition prototype hardware into controlled production designs with drawings, specifications, inspection criteria, and manufacturing controls.
• Spot system-level risks early and drive them to closure. Rotating equipment is never an isolated discipline here.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related technical discipline
• 10+ years in power-generation, propulsion, turbomachinery, or high-speed rotating equipment development
• Strong experience with high-temperature rotating equipment, with hands‑on design of blades, vanes, disks, shafts, impellers, or bearings
• Command of fluid dynamics, heat transfer, solid mechanics, rotor dynamics, and mechanical design
• Experience with high-temperature materials, coatings, and turbomachinery manufacturing processes, plus a firm grasp of creep, fatigue, fracture, vibration, burst, overspeed, and life prediction
• Full hardware cycles behind you, from design through test, failure investigation, redesign, and production
• Ability to interpret and create drawings, tolerance schemes, specifications, test plans, and manufacturing requirements, with familiarity in balancing, bearing systems, and high-speed rotating equipment
• Sound judgment with incomplete information, comfort with suppliers and technicians, and clear communication

Who You Will Work With

• Controls. Speed limits, acceleration schedules, overspeed protection, and transients.
• Mechanical. Housings, mounts, bearing supports, exhaust, lube, and structural interfaces.
• Combustion. Inlet conditions, pattern factor, and hot-section durability.
• Electrical. Generator and accessory interfaces, torsional behavior, and starting requirements.
• Manufacturing. Machining, casting, additive, coatings, balancing, and production readiness.
• Test. Instrumentation, rig design, vibration monitoring, and teardown analysis.

Bonus Points

• High-speed rotating equipment for power or propulsion applications
• Rolling-element or fluid-film bearings
• Industrial power-generation or propulsion equipment
• Blade vibration and forced response
• Additively manufactured hot-section hardware
• High-temperature turbine materials
• Spin testing and overspeed testing
• Thermal barrier coatings
• Component and system rig testing
• Rotating equipment failure analysis

You Will Thrive Here If

• You want to own hardware, not just analysis. A blade isn't done when the CFD converges, nor a rotor when the margins look good. It has to be built, balanced, and survive the real world.
• You can go from design review to shop floor to test data and back to the model.
• You take failures personally enough to solve them, but objectively enough to learn from them.
• Most importantly, you want responsibility for the machine.

Why Drove Aeropower

• Ownership is real. The engineer responsible for a component stays involved from first design through production.
• Decisions happen quickly. Work directly with hardware, suppliers, manufacturing, test, and company leadership.
• One of the first. As one of Drove's first employees, you will have a real voice in the decisions that shape the product and the company.
• A founder who has done it before. Drove's founder has already successfully built a company, and you will help build the next one.