Senior Flight Test Analysis Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

About IWV

Iron Will Ventures is a defense engineering and technical services company supporting some of the Department of War's most challenging missile defense, hypersonic, flight test, and advanced technology programs.  Guided by the philosophy of “I Will,”we help scale the defense industrial base through advanced testing, deep technical analysis, and resilient industrial ecosystems—accelerating the delivery of hypersonic, missile defense, and other critical national security capabilities.  Our teams work alongside government program offices, laboratories, ranges, and industry partners to solve difficult technical and integration problems and accelerate capability from development through flight test and fielding.

Out Test. Out Analyze. Out Build.

Position Summary

Iron Will Ventures is seeking a Senior Flight Test Analysis Engineer to support the planning, analysis, and assessment of advanced missile, hypersonic, target, and aerospace flight-test programs.

This is a hands-on technical analysis position spanning the complete flight-test lifecycle. The engineer will help define how a test should be analyzed before it occurs, develop pre-test predictions and analytical products, assess test data during and immediately following execution, and perform detailed post-flight reconstruction and performance analysis.

The successful candidate will work with multidisciplinary engineering teams to transform vehicle models, simulations, instrumentation data, telemetry, and test observations into defensible technical conclusions about system and mission performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Perform pre-test and post-test analysis for advanced flight-test missions.
• Develop analytical approaches to evaluate test objectives, system performance, and mission success criteria.
• Perform pre-flight modeling, simulation, and performance prediction to establish expected vehicle and mission behavior.
• Conduct trajectory and mission analysis using vehicle performance models and simulation data.
• Perform Monte Carlo and statistical analysis to characterize expected performance, dispersions, uncertainties, and test outcomes.
• Support test design by identifying required measurements, data sources, instrumentation, and analytical methods needed to evaluate test objectives.
• Develop predicted performance envelopes and other pre-test analytical products.
• Evaluate telemetry, tracking, instrumentation, and other test data during and following flight-test events.
• Perform rapid quick-look analysis to provide initial assessments of mission and system performance.
• Conduct detailed post-flight trajectory reconstruction and performance assessment.
• Compare measured flight performance against pre-test predictions, simulations, requirements, and expected behavior.
• Analyze vehicle kinematics, dynamics, guidance performance, propulsion performance, and other system-level characteristics as applicable to the mission.
• Perform data reduction, synchronization, filtering, conditioning, and correlation across multiple instrumentation and telemetry sources.
• Quantify uncertainty and assess the quality and limitations of test data.
• Identify and investigate anomalous or unexpected flight behavior.
• Perform root-cause and sensitivity analyses to help explain differences between predicted and observed performance.
• Support evaluation of system requirements and test success criteria using measured flight data.
• Develop engineering plots, visualizations, technical reports, and decision-quality analytical products.
• Develop and maintain analytical tools, scripts, models, and reusable workflows to improve the speed and consistency of test analysis.
• Perform independent technical review of models, data, analytical methods, assumptions, and results.
• Support technical interchange meetings, test planning activities, and pre- and post-test technical reviews.
• Present analytical results and technical conclusions to engineering teams, program leadership, and government customers.
• Capture lessons learned and incorporate flight-test results into planning and analysis for future missions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of relevant engineering, modeling and simulation, flight-test, or technical analysis experience.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing missile, aerospace, launch vehicle, target, hypersonic, or similar complex systems.
• Strong understanding of engineering analysis, modeling and simulation, and quantitative methods.
• Experience working with flight-test, simulation, telemetry, tracking, or other time-series engineering data.
• Experience comparing predicted and measured system performance.
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills and the ability to independently investigate complex technical problems.
• Ability to work with large and complex engineering datasets.
• Ability to clearly document analytical methodologies, assumptions, uncertainties, results, and technical conclusions.
• Ability to communicate complex technical results to both engineering and program audiences.
• U.S. citizenship.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.
  

Desired Qualifications

• Active DoD Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI clearance.
• 15+ years of missile, hypersonic, missile-defense, target, launch-vehicle, or flight-test analysis experience.
• Experience supporting developmental or operational flight-test programs.
• Experience with pre-test predictions and post-flight performance reconstruction.
• Experience with trajectory reconstruction and vehicle performance analysis.
• Experience performing Monte Carlo, uncertainty, sensitivity, or statistical analysis.
• Experience analyzing telemetry, radar, GPS, inertial, optical, or other flight-test instrumentation data.
• Experience with guidance, navigation, and control analysis.
• Experience with missile or launch-vehicle propulsion and performance analysis.
• Experience performing anomaly investigation or root-cause analysis using flight-test data.
• Experience with missile-defense targets, interceptors, hypersonic vehicles, sounding rockets, launch vehicles, or other high-performance flight systems.
• Experience using MATLAB, Python, or similar scientific computing and analytical environments.
• Experience with trajectory, modeling, or mission-analysis tools such as POST, OTIS, STK, TAOS, or comparable government and industry tools.
• Experience developing automated data-processing and analytical workflows.
• Familiarity with configuration management, verification and validation, and engineering-quality practices for analytical models and tools.
  

Travel

• Limited travel may be required

What We're Looking For

We are looking for an experienced analyst who understands that flight-test analysis begins well before launch and continues well after the vehicle has flown.

The successful candidate should be comfortable moving between models, simulations, test objectives, telemetry, trajectory data, instrumentation, and actual flight results to determine what happened, why it happened, and what the results mean for the system and the next test.

This position is particularly well suited for an engineer or analyst who has spent significant time supporting complex missile, hypersonic, target, missile-defense, or aerospace flight-test programs and enjoys getting into the data to solve difficult technical problems.

This is not primarily a program-management or test-coordination position. It is a senior technical analysis role focused on extracting maximum value from flight testing.

Why Iron Will Ventures

Iron Will brings together experienced test professionals, engineers, analysts, and program leaders who have spent their careers executing complex national-security programs.  Our role is not simply to observe the process. We help our customers  plan the test, integrate the mission, identify the problems, drive them to resolution, execute successfully, and learn from the results.  

Iron Will Ventures Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status.