Chief Engineer

We hire for talent, not rigid boxes. You may have grown through Systems Engineering, GNC, avionics, flight controls, vehicle design or another deeply technical discipline. What matters is that you have developed the breadth, judgement and technical credibility to make decisions at whole-vehicle level.

If you have spent your career building systems that people initially thought were too difficult, too ambitious or too fast to deliver, we want to hear from you.

What you'll do

• Own the technical integrity of Hypersonica’s flight vehicles from system concept through design, integration, test and flight.
• Define and continuously evolve the overall vehicle architecture, ensuring that mission objectives translate into a coherent physical and functional system.
• Act as the senior technical authority across vehicle-level engineering decisions, trade-offs, interfaces and risk.
• Ensure GNC, avionics, electronics, software, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal systems, power and payloads work together as a single integrated vehicle.
• Drive the definition and decomposition of mission and system requirements, focusing on the requirements that genuinely determine whether the vehicle succeeds.
• Own the critical interfaces between systems and resolve technical conflicts when optimisation within one discipline damages performance somewhere else.
• Lead major system-level trades around performance, mass, power, thermal constraints, controllability, reliability, manufacturability and operational capability.
• Work closely with GNC and avionics teams to ensure sensing, estimation, control, computing, actuation and vehicle dynamics form a robust closed-loop system.
• Challenge designs from first principles rather than accepting assumptions because they are conventional or inherited from previous programmes.
• Lead technical readiness for major design reviews, integration milestones and flight tests.
• Use test and flight data aggressively, turning unexpected behaviour and failures into design improvements rather than paperwork.
• Work directly with Manufacturing and AIT to make sure the vehicle being designed can actually be built, integrated, tested and iterated quickly.
• Make difficult technical decisions when information is incomplete, balancing engineering rigour with the speed required to deliver breakthrough capability.

Who you are

• An exceptional multidisciplinary engineer who naturally thinks at system and vehicle level rather than only within a single subsystem.
• Deeply technically credible, with a strong foundation in areas such as Systems Engineering, GNC, avionics, flight controls, vehicle architecture or complex aerospace system design.
• Experienced taking complex aerospace, defence, space, autonomous or similarly high-consequence systems from concept into real integrated hardware.
• Strong in system architecture, requirements, interfaces, integration, verification and technical risk.
• Comfortable reasoning about closed-loop vehicle behaviour, including the relationship between vehicle dynamics, sensors, estimation, control, actuators and onboard computing.
• Able to understand a difficult technical problem quickly, identify the assumptions that actually matter and drive the team towards an answer.
• Experienced making significant engineering trade-offs across multiple disciplines rather than optimising one component in isolation.
• Comfortable moving between first-principles technical discussion and major programme-level decisions without losing depth.
• Willing to get personally involved when a problem matters. You do not need a large team, perfect information or an established process before you can make progress.
• Able to distinguish engineering rigour from engineering bureaucracy.
• Confident challenging exceptional specialists in their own disciplines while remaining open enough to change your own mind when the evidence demands it.
• Calm when things go wrong, intellectually honest when something is not understood and relentless about finding the real answer.
• Motivated by the opportunity to build sovereign European defence capability and comfortable working on systems where the consequences of engineering decisions genuinely matter.

You might have come from

There is no single route to becoming the right Chief Engineer for Hypersonica.

You may currently be a Chief Engineer, Systems Architect, Head of Systems Engineering, GNC Lead, Avionics Lead, Flight Controls Lead, Vehicle Architect or Principal Engineer .

You may have spent your career in missiles, high-speed flight, combat aircraft, spacecraft, autonomous systems or another environment where complex physical systems need to work first time.

We are less interested in your current title than in the scale of the technical problems you have personally solved.

What we offer

• The opportunity to hold genuine technical ownership of one of Europe’s most ambitious defence engineering programmes.
• A company early enough that your decisions will materially shape the vehicles, engineering organisation and technical culture we build.
• Direct access to the problem. Short decision paths, minimal bureaucracy and engineers empowered to solve engineering problems.
• Daily collaboration with exceptional people across GNC, avionics, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, manufacturing, test and defence.
• The freedom to challenge convention, build from first principles and move quickly when the evidence supports it.
• The resources and ambition to attempt things that would take significantly longer in traditional aerospace organisations.
• The opportunity to see your decisions move from a whiteboard, into hardware and ultimately into flight.

The person we are looking for

We are not looking for someone to simply approve other people’s engineering.

We are looking for the person engineers turn to when the disciplines disagree, the data is incomplete, the deadline is real and somebody has to understand the whole system well enough to make the call.

Someone who can bring clarity to complexity without slowing the organisation down.

If that sounds like you, come and build it with us.

At Hypersonica, every hire raises the bar. We are deliberately small, intensely capable, and deeply mission-driven. If this role feels like a strong fit, or if you believe you bring something exceptional that goes beyond the description, we encourage you to apply.

Hypersonica is an equal-opportunity employer and assesses candidates solely on merit, capability, and potential.

You can apply directly to this role or reach out to Nathan Sweeney, Head of Talent. We review every application and aim to respond to all candidates within two weeks, whether the answer is yes or no.

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Source: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), table; dl-de/by-2-0; StarIn's calculation