Composites Technician

Composites Technician

The Bike Shop, part of the Hardware Engineering directorate, serves as a rapid-prototyping and product-development hub supporting engineering teams across the organization. Our mission is to provide fast, high-quality prototypes, early-stage demonstration hardware, and hands-on development support that accelerates engineering solutions throughout the product lifecycle. We offer a broad range of in-house capabilities including mechanical and electrical fabrication, engineering and test support, and procurement coordination, enabling teams to quickly move from concept to demonstrated intent.

We are seeking a highly skilled Composites Technician to join our prototyping operations and support the growing demand for advanced composite structures. This role plays a key part in planning, fabricating, and delivering composite components that meet stringent engineering requirements. Working closely with the composites team, the technician will perform hands-on fabrication—ranging from layups and mold making to trimming, bonding, finishing, and integration—while ensuring projects meet quality, schedule, and performance goals. This is a dynamic, highly collaborative environment where each day brings new challenges, miscellaneous fabrication tasks, and the opportunity to contribute directly to innovative engineering solutions.

What You Will Do

• Read and interpret engineering drawings, models, and specifications. Understand tolerances, ply schedules, fiber orientations, and surface-finish requirements to ensure parts meet design intent.
• Estimate fabrication tasks (labor hours, material costs, lead times) in a timely manner while identifying manufacturability issues and tooling required. You will use your skills to communicate and negotiate technical requirements.
• Initiate quoting and ordering of raw materials, hardware, and machine tools for each project.
• Perform hands on fabrication in composites shop, including but not limited to mold making, vacuum forming, woodworking, silicones, part marking/stencil making, carbon fiber layups, fiberglass work, etc.
• Perform trimming, sanding, bonding, installing inserts like Helicoils, Keenserts and assembly operations.
• Carry out wet layup, prepreg layup, bagging, curing, demolding, part trimming, drilling, bonding using adhesives/films, paint/stenciling and final part finishing.
• Perform mechanical/electro-mechanical integration.
• Responsible for doing final inspection of the composite parts and also final close out of projects.
• All around hands on mechanical fabrication, this is a very fluid role that could require different mechanical skills every day.

Qualifications You Must Have:

• Typically requires an AA/AS degree, (or another 2-year post high school training) and a minimum of eight (8) years of experience in a manufacturing or composites shop environment.
• Experience with composites and woodworking.
• Experience with adhesives and silicones.
• Experience with reading fabrication drawings.

Qualifications We Value:

• Highly organized, efficient and able to manage multiple tasks and deadlines effectively.
• Strong communications and interpersonal skills and the ability to work cohesively in a multi-disciplined teaming environment.
• Experience using 3D CAD programs
• Knowledge of materials, machining processes, plating, hardware, inserts, etc.
• Experience working with small engines