Senior/Staff Applied Aerodynamicist

This role is central to Zipline's autonomous aircraft hardware and software development, covering everything from clean-sheet vehicle conceptual layout to detailed geometry design of all wetted surfaces. You will own and drive conceptual design for new vehicles, build validated aerodynamics plant models, design low-noise propellers, deliver high-quality CAD surfaces, and maintain test hardware and methods including wind tunnels and flight test assets.

Responsibilities

• Conceptual design for new vehicles, as well as significant hardware revisions of existing platforms
• Building high quality aerodynamics plant models that are carefully validated through ground- and flight-based testing
• Propeller designs that push the boundary of low noise, whilst maintaining high aerodynamic efficiency
• Having worked out how to find step improvements in range, reductions in noise and enhanced maneuverability, you deliver high quality CAD surfaces, which are used by mechanical designers as inputs to produce the final parts
• Designing and maintaining our test hardware and methods, including internal wind tunnels, bench test set-ups, and instrumented flight test assets, as well as the essential aero measurement tools

Requirements

• You will have a minimum of 4+ years of industry experience, with a proven record of shipping high quality products
• Detailed flow analysis via Computational Fluid Dynamics using packages such as Fluent, Star-CCM+, openFOAM, powerFlow.
• Generative design of three-dimensional aerodynamic objects, using advanced surfacing techniques in packages such as CATIA or NX
• Hands-on experimental aerodynamics, for example wind tunnel testing, using a variety of techniques including basic flow visualizations (surface oil flow, tufting), pressure measurements (e.g. pressure scanning, pressure sensitive paints), optical flow diagnostics (e.g. LDV, PIV) and load measurement
• Use of low and mid fidelity tools for basic aircraft sizing, for example XFOIL, XROTOR, OpenVSP, RCAS
• Fundamental understanding of a range of aero fundamentals, including: vortex dynamics, boundary layers, turbulence, finite wing theory, aircraft dynamics, three-dimensional flow separation, propeller theory, aeroacoustics, heat and mass transfer, internal flows, fan theory