Staff Field Services Engineer, Structures

What you'll do

• Own technical evaluation of V-BAT airframe, structural, mechanical, and repair-related sustainment issues across the fielded fleet.
• Assess field-reported structural damage, wear, cracking, deformation, corrosion, impact damage, fatigue concerns, hard landing effects, handling damage, and operational wear.
• Evaluate structural findings from field returns, depot inspections, mishaps, maintenance events, manufacturing escapes, and recurring fleet issues.
• Provide engineering recommendations for repair, rework, use-as-is, replacement, inspection, retrofit, or escalation based on technical risk and fleet impact.
• Support Material Review Board activity by providing structural engineering input for nonconforming airframe, mechanical, composite, metallic, bonded, or fastened assemblies.
• Develop, review, or approve structural repair instructions, inspection criteria, service guidance, and field or depot repair procedures.
• Partner with Fleet Support, Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Product Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, and Operations to resolve structural issues impacting readiness or customer support.
• Support root cause investigations for structural failures, recurring mechanical issues, fatigue-related findings, or field-reported damage trends.
• Assess whether structural issues affect aircraft safety, airworthiness, mission readiness, configuration, service life, maintainability, or customer operations.
• Provide technical input to retrofit plans, design improvements, service bulletins, maintenance releases, and fleet-wide inspection or repair campaigns.
• Ensure structural repairs, deviations, and design or configuration changes are documented and coordinated through appropriate configuration control and engineering change processes.
• Review drawings, models, specifications, inspection results, test data, repair records, and field evidence to support technical dispositions.
• Identify recurring structural or mechanical issues that require corrective action, design improvement, maintenance procedure updates, or fleet-level mitigation.
• Support development of repair limits, inspection intervals, allowable damage criteria, and practical field maintenance guidance where appropriate.
• Coordinate with manufacturing and depot teams to ensure repair methods are executable, repeatable, inspectable, and aligned with engineering intent.
• Provide timely technical guidance to support urgent field, depot, or customer-impacting sustainment issues.
• Support X-BAT lessons learned where V-BAT structural sustainment experience can inform future sustainment, design-for-maintainability, repairability, and lifecycle planning.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Structural Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in aerospace structures, mechanical engineering, airframe sustainment, aircraft repair, structural analysis, manufacturing engineering, product engineering, or complex hardware sustainment.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating structural damage, mechanical failures, nonconformances, field issues, repair options, or fleet-impacting hardware concerns.
• Strong understanding of metallic and/or composite structures, bonded assemblies, fastened joints, airframe hardware, load paths, fatigue, damage tolerance, structural repair methods, and inspection criteria.
• Experience developing or supporting engineering dispositions, repair instructions, inspection criteria, rework plans, service guidance, or maintenance procedures.
• Ability to evaluate field damage and recommend practical, technically defensible repair or disposition paths under time-sensitive operational conditions.
• Experience working with Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Product Engineering, Fleet Support, MRB, Configuration Management, or Operations teams to resolve technical issues.
• Familiarity with engineering drawings, specifications, bills of material, configuration control, nonconformance processes, engineering change processes, and technical documentation.
• Ability to assess structural risk in terms of safety, readiness, service life, customer impact, maintainability, and fleet-level exposure.
• Strong problem-solving skills, including the ability to investigate ambiguous field reports, determine likely failure modes, and define next steps for inspection, analysis, repair, or escalation.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly document technical findings, repair rationale, risk assessments, and recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to operate independently as a senior technical IC and drive resolution of complex sustainment issues without requiring close direction.
• Ability to balance engineering rigor, configuration discipline, operational urgency, and practical field execution.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with unmanned aircraft systems, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense products, fielded aircraft, or deployed hardware systems.
• Experience with composite aircraft structures, bonded repairs, metallic airframe repairs, structural substantiation, fatigue evaluation, damage tolerance, or stress analysis.
• Familiarity with MRB, RCCA, FRACAS, ECO/ECR processes, service bulletins, maintenance releases, depot repair, field repair, or fleet retrofit execution.
• Experience supporting structural repairs, inspections, or dispositions in aviation, aerospace, rotorcraft, fixed-wing aircraft, missiles, robotics, or other high-reliability hardware environments.
• Experience with CAD, PLM, ERP, finite element analysis, hand calculations, structural test data, inspection data, or failure analysis tools.
• Experience supporting customer-facing or fielded product issues where technical recommendations directly affect readiness, safety, or return-to-service decisions.
• Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or advanced manufacturing environment.
• Advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Structural Engineering, or a related discipline preferred but not required.