Senior Applications Engineer: Aerospace & Defense

Fathom Mfg; Town of Hartland (WI); On-site; USD 105,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Paid time off

401k Plan

Employee discounts

Job summary

Fathom Mfg in Hartland, WI, is seeking an Applications Engineer to lead technical and manufacturing strategy for complex CNC opportunities in aerospace and defense. You will develop competitive proposals, analyze materials and processes, and guide from opportunity qualification through production.

The role requires strong financial judgment, CAD interpretation, and collaboration with Sales, Engineering, and suppliers to ensure readiness and profitable programs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in precision manufacturing.
• 7+ years in CNC manufacturing or related fields.
• Experience supporting aerospace and defense customers, including proposals and transition into production.
• Proven business development and technical selling skills.
• Strong financial judgment: cost modeling, pricing, margins, and NRE proposals.
• Ability to interpret complex drawings and CAD models and manage multiple high-value opportunities.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical and manufacturing strategy for complex CNC opportunities and aerospace and defense programs.
• Develop competitive, accurate, and commercially sound proposals that account for materials, machining methods, setup and cycle times, tooling, outside processing, inspection, production volumes, and delivery requirements.
• Serve as a technical partner to Sales, actively participating in customer discovery, opportunity qualification, technical presentations, negotiations, and closing activities.
• Identify opportunities to expand relationships with aerospace and defense customers, secure additional part families, and convert individual projects into recurring production programs.
• Conduct Design for Manufacturability (DFM) reviews and recommend improvements that reduce cost, improve manufacturability, and support production readiness.
• Evaluate machining methods, tooling, workholding, programming strategies, inspection plans, and production workflows.
• Collaborate with manufacturing sites and strategic suppliers to validate capability, capacity and production readiness.
• Partner with Quality, Compliance, and Operations to identify customer‑specific quality, documentation, traceability, security, and contractual requirements during opportunity qualification and quoting.
• Ensure the proposed manufacturing strategy incorporates applicable requirements and that associated costs, lead times, and risks are understood before commitments are made to the customer.
• Serve as the technical lead during the transition from awarded opportunity to program onboarding and production, working alongside Program Management.
• Ensure manufacturing teams receive complete requirements, approved DFM decisions, cost assumptions, tooling plans, inspection expectations, and customer commitments.
• Support technical issue resolution and engineering changes through launch. Compare actual manufacturing performance with quoted assumptions and apply lessons learned to improve future proposals and program outcomes.

Skills

CNC manufacturing

Manufacturing engineering

Applications engineering

Technical estimating

Business development

Technical selling

Cost modeling

Pricing & margins

NRE proposals

CAD interpretation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or manufacturing engineering, or related discipline

Job description

Fathom Mfg in Hartland, WI, is seeking an Applications Engineer to lead technical and manufacturing strategy for complex CNC opportunities in aerospace and defense. You will develop competitive proposals, analyze materials and processes, and guide from opportunity qualification through production.

The role requires strong financial judgment, CAD interpretation, and collaboration with Sales, Engineering, and suppliers to ensure readiness and profitable programs.