Operational Performance Engineer, Mass Properties and Vehicle Performance

Mach Industries is seeking an Operational Performance Engineer to build and maintain vehicle mass properties and vehicle-level performance tracking across multiple programs. You will be responsible for mass, center of gravity, and inertia for every supported vehicle, manage subsystem mass budgets, and ensure each vehicle's mass properties close against its requirements. You will also maintain the broader vehicle performance picture across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload, so that Vehicle Leads and engineering teams always have an authoritative, current answer to where the vehicle stands. Scope and autonomy in this role scale with experience; you will begin by establishing mass properties on a single weight-critical program and grow into broader ownership across programs.

Responsibilities

• Own vehicle mass properties, including mass, center of gravity, and moments and products of inertia, across configurations and mission states for all supported programs.
• Own the vehicle mass fraction and CG envelope, ensuring mass properties satisfy vehicle-level requirements.
• Own moment of inertia tracking against Level 1 vehicle requirements for pitch, yaw, and roll.
• Assign, manage, and enforce subsystem and team-level mass budgets in coordination with configuration management and integration teams.
• Deliver weekly CG status and mass-versus-budget reporting by subsystem and team.
• Deliver weekly mass trend analysis, identifying which groups are trending heavy, the rate of growth, and the risk to vehicle closure.
• Support engineering trades as they pertain to weight impact, providing mass property data and analysis to inform design decisions.
• Own analytical-versus-actual weight reconciliation by obtaining actual part weights, evaluating the impact on the vehicle, and assessing readiness before build and flight.
• Maintain vehicle and subsystem performance baselines, budgets, margins, and assumptions across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload from early design through flight test.
• Assess how design decisions and configuration changes affect vehicle-level performance across all domains.
• Reconcile predictions with discipline analyses, CAD, as-built hardware, and ground and flight test data.
• Automate performance tracking and reporting, partnering with MDAO engineers on shared tooling and data pipelines.
• Keep performance records traceable and reproducible, and communicate status, uncertainty, and findings to Vehicle Leads and engineering teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 2+ years of relevant experience in vehicle performance, mass properties, vehicle design, flight dynamics, systems engineering, or a related discipline.
• Dedicated mass properties experience, including weight tracking, CG and inertia accounting, or mass budget management, on at least one complex aerospace vehicle program.
• Experience with configuration-controlled mass property records and multi-team mass budget management.
• Experience assessing weight impact of design trades and configuration changes at the vehicle level.
• Strong understanding of vehicle performance and the interactions among mass properties, aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, power, and controls.
• Experience using Python, Julia, MATLAB, or a similar technical computing language for engineering analysis.
• Ability to organize inputs from multiple disciplines, spot inconsistencies, and explain what they mean at the vehicle level.
• Ability to communicate analyses with clear assumptions, limitations, and uncertainty.

Nice to have

• Experience as mass properties lead or weight engineer on a large or weight-critical vehicle program.
• Experience with electric, hybrid-electric, or other weight-critical aircraft where mass closure is a persistent design driver.
• Multi-program mass properties experience, covering vehicles at different maturity levels or size classes simultaneously.
• Experience with Siemens NX, CATIA, or similar CAD/PLM tools for mass property extraction and validation.
• Experience maintaining performance baselines, technical budgets, margins, or configuration-controlled engineering data beyond mass properties.
• Experience with aircraft, UAS, missiles, rockets, or other aerospace vehicles.
• Experience building automated analysis, dashboards, or reporting workflows for mass properties or vehicle performance.
• Familiarity with conceptual design, vehicle sizing, flight dynamics, or multidisciplinary vehicle analysis.
• Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.

Benefits

• The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offers may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and training, critical skills, and business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in most offers and are considered part of Mach’s total compensation package. Mach offers benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, and opportunities for professional development.