[Nyx Earth] Propulsion Design Office Principal Verified today

About Nyx

The Exploration Company is developing, producing, and operating Nyx, a modular and reusable space orbital vehicle that can eventually be refuelled in orbit and carry cargo, with the potential to carry humans in the longer term.

Your Role

You are Principal of the Propulsion Design Office. You lead a team spanning thermal, structural, mechanical, CFD and CAD functions. You own the technical design and qualification of the propulsion system, from concept through flight.

Team Leadership and Engineering Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow your engineering team, fostering technical excellence and accountability.
• Define individual scopes, set priorities, and manage workload across concurrent design activities aligned with program milestones.
• Conduct regular design reviews and one-on-ones, providing technical direction and supporting career development.

Propulsion System Design and Technical Ownership

• Make or approve key design decisions on feed and pressure systems, and associated structures.
• Drive design-to-requirements traceability, ensuring systems satisfy mass, thermal, and safety margins up to qualification.
• Coordinate with Systems Engineering and Vehicle Design to manage interfaces between the propulsion system and adjacent vehicle subsystems.

Thermal Analysis and Management

• Oversee steady-state and transient thermal analyses of propulsion components, ensuring compliance with temperature limits across all mission phases (ground operations, in-orbit, re-entry).
• Review and approve thermal models, ensuring analytical rigor and correlation with test data.
• Guide the team in identifying test platforms and defining test objectives.

Structural and Mechanical Design

• Direct the mechanical design of propulsion structures and brackets, ensuring adequate strength, stiffness, and fatigue life under load cases.
• Oversee FEA and hand-analysis efforts to verify structural margins, and lead disposition of any margin concerns or design anomalies.
• Work closely with the AIT team to define and validate integration sequences.

CAD, Documentation and Configuration Control

• Define and enforce CAD standards, model maturity gates, and drawing release processes within the design office, ensuring consistency and traceability across the propulsion product tree.
• Oversee maintenance of the engineering master model and associated bill of materials (BOM), coordinating with PDM/PLM administrators.
• Ensure design documentation including ICDs, engineering drawings, design notes, and specification trees is complete, reviewed, and baselined on schedule.

What You Bring

• 5 or more years of hands-on experience in propulsion system design for launch vehicles, spacecraft, or space capsules, with direct exposure to liquid propulsion architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to work across thermal, structural, and mechanical domains. You can lead and critically review work across all three without needing to be the deepest expert in every field.
• Track record managing small-to-mid-size engineering teams in a fast-paced, hardware-delivery environment, with the ability to develop junior engineers while maintaining technical standards.
• Prior experience running or closely supervising thermal analyses (Thermal Desktop, ANSYS or equivalent) and structural analyses (NASTRAN or equivalent). Strong familiarity with CAD environments (CATIA, NX, or equivalent).
• Experience managing complex system-level trades and interfaces, and formal design review processes.
• Hands-on problem-solving approach combined with collaborative mindset to work across multidisciplinary teams.
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to multitask.
• Capability to work autonomously whilst collaborating productively with remote teams.
• Positive and flexible attitude in a constantly evolving environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of audiences.

Location

You will perform your duties principally at The Exploration Company's premises in Bordeaux. You may be required to travel from time to time to the company's premises in Munich.

Background Check

All offers are contingent upon successful completion of a background check, which will be subject to the country, role, and project. Relocation assistance is provided for those willing to relocate, including visa sponsorship where applicable.