Senior Manufacturing Engineer - Structural Bonding

Castelion Corporation; Rio Rancho (NM); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Castelion is seeking a Senior Manufacturing Engineer with deep experience in structural bonding to develop, qualify, and scale bonded-joint manufacturing for our solid rocket motors and related hypersonic hardware. You will own process definition, surface preparation, adhesive selection and cure control, inspection, and yield improvement across development builds to high-rate production.

You will collaborate with Design, Quality, Tooling & Automation, Production, and Site Operations to enable

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of manufacturing engineering experience in aerospace, defense, or high-reliability bonded structures.
• 3+ years of hands‑on ownership of structural bonding processes (composite bonds, metal‑to‑composite, elastomer‑to‑composite, or equivalent).
• Demonstrated success qualifying bonding processes and transitioning them from development to production.

Responsibilities

• Own manufacturing processes for structural bonding of SRM hardware, including liner/insulator-to-case bonds, composite-to-metal joints, nozzle/closure bonds, and bonded assembly interfaces.
• Develop and qualify surface preparation, adhesive application, fixturing, cure, and inspection processes to achieve consistent bond-line quality and structural performance.
• Execute DFM/DFA, PFMEA, control plans, and statistical process control (SPC) for bonded assemblies; drive first-pass yield and cycle-time improvement.
• Define in-process inspection and NDE strategies for bond-line integrity and support disposition of bonding-related nonconformances.
• Design or specify bonding fixtures, dispensing methods, vacuum bagging or pressure-application approaches, and cure tooling in partnership with Tooling & Automation.
• Support new product introduction and design changes by providing producibility input on joint design, tolerances, adhesive selection, and assembly sequence.
• Lead root-cause analysis and corrective actions for disbonds, voids, porosity, contamination, incomplete cure, or related process escapes.
• Author and maintain work instructions, travelers, cure profiles, and process documentation compliant with AS9100 and customer requirements.
• Collaborate with suppliers on adhesives, primers, surface-treatment materials, and incoming quality of bond-critical components.
• Support process qualification and production ramp at Midland, TX and the Project Ranger campus in New Mexico.

Skills

Structural bonding

Aerospace manufacturing

Process ownership

Root-cause analysis

Quality systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field

Tools

SolidWorks

NX

Cure tooling

Job description

Castelion is seeking a Senior Manufacturing Engineer with deep experience in structural bonding to develop, qualify, and scale bonded-joint manufacturing for our solid rocket motors and related hypersonic hardware. You will own process definition, surface preparation, adhesive selection and cure control, inspection, and yield improvement across development builds to high-rate production.

You will collaborate with Design, Quality, Tooling & Automation, Production, and Site Operations to enable