Structural Engineer

Structural Analysis & Test Engineer

Structural Analysis | Environmental Test | Electronics & Mechanical Hardware Qualification

    Location Orange County, California Employment Type Full-time Department Engineering     Compensation Competitive base salary commensurate with experience, plus equity (Target $140K to 180K) Eligibility U.S. citizenship required; must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance

About Tiberius Aerospace

Tiberius Aerospace is a cutting-edge aerospace and defense company delivering advanced, mission-critical technologies for government and private-sector customers. The company develops high-performance aerospace systems, secure engineering solutions, and complex hardware built for demanding operational environments.

Tiberius is scaling quickly and is looking for engineers who operate with ownership, urgency, technical discipline, and sound judgment. Our teams move from concept to real hardware, test, and deployment with the rigor required for high-consequence systems.

The Role

Tiberius Aerospace is seeking a hands-on Structural Analysis & Test Engineer to evaluate and validate the structural integrity, durability, and environmental survivability of mechanical assemblies and electronic hardware used in advanced aerospace and precision-strike systems.

This role combines analysis and test ownership. You will translate system requirements and mission environments into component-level loads, analysis cases, verification plans, and test requirements. Your work will cover static strength, fatigue, shock, vibration, thermal-structural interaction, and hardware qualification.

The ideal candidate is comfortable moving between an analysis workstation and a test floor—building credible models, designing fixtures, instrumenting hardware, interpreting data, and using the results to improve the next design iteration.

What You’ll Do

Structural Analysis & Verification

• Develop and maintain load flowdowns from system requirements to subsystems, assemblies, and components.
• Define load cases, interface loads, boundary conditions, factors of safety, and verification approaches appropriate to the hardware and operating environment.
• Perform static structural analysis of metallic structures, composite hardware, joints, fasteners, housings, electronics enclosures, and electromechanical assemblies using hand calculations and finite element analysis.
• Evaluate stress, deformation, stiffness, buckling, joint integrity, and margins of safety.
• Develop and maintain FEA models, including meshing, material definition, contact conditions, preload, boundary conditions, and results interpretation.
• Validate numerical results using hand calculations, simplified models, and first-principles engineering judgment.
• Assess high-cycle fatigue life of metallic components and electronic hardware, including printed circuit boards, solder joints, component leads, and interconnects.
• Perform modal, random-vibration, transient-shock, and time-domain dynamic analyses to evaluate response, load amplification, and hardware survivability.
• Evaluate thermal-structural interaction, including thermal-expansion mismatch, temperature gradients, thermally induced stress, and temperature-dependent material properties.
• Support nonlinear analyses involving contact, preload, plasticity, and transient response when required.

Test Planning, Execution & Correlation

• Develop structural verification and qualification plans for static, fatigue, vibration, shock, and combined thermal-mechanical testing.
• Define test conditions, instrumentation plans, procedures, success criteria, and acceptance criteria that trace directly to engineering requirements.
• Design or support the design of test fixtures, accounting for fixture stiffness, modal behavior, and influence on measured results.
• Support test execution, including instrumentation setup, data-acquisition configuration, troubleshooting, and post-test inspection.
• Select, install, and use strain gauges, accelerometers, thermocouples, load cells, displacement sensors, and associated data-acquisition systems.
• Process and interpret strain, acceleration, force, displacement, and temperature data using MATLAB, Python, or equivalent tools.
• Correlate finite-element models with modal, strain, vibration, shock, and environmental-test data.
• Investigate failures, unexpected test results, and analysis-to-test discrepancies; identify root causes and recommend design improvements.
• Support prototype builds, environmental qualification, flight-hardware integration, and production-readiness efforts.

Cross-Functional Hardware Ownership

• Work closely with Mechanical, Electrical, Systems, Manufacturing, Quality, and Test teams throughout the hardware-development lifecycle.
• Translate structural and test results into clear design guidance for engineers, technicians, and program leadership.
• Participate in design reviews and communicate structural risk, verification status, margins, discrepancies, and recommended actions.
• Support manufacturing and supplier partners with design-for-manufacturing, design-for-assembly, and nonconformance-disposition decisions.
• Ensure lessons from analysis and test are captured and incorporated into subsequent design iterations, requirements, and verification plans.
• Prepare clear technical reports, analysis packages, test procedures, and milestone-review materials.

What You’ll Bring

• B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, or a related discipline.
• 3+ years of experience performing structural analysis and supporting physical testing of mechanical, electronic, or electromechanical hardware.
• Strong foundation in solid mechanics, structural dynamics, fatigue, vibration, shock, and thermal stress.
• Proficiency with finite-element tools such as ANSYS, Abaqus, NASTRAN, FEMAP, or equivalent, including model setup, meshing, contacts, boundary conditions, and result interpretation.
• Demonstrated ability to validate simulation results using hand calculations, simplified models, and sound engineering judgment.
• Experience assessing high-cycle fatigue in metallic structures and electronic assemblies, with an understanding of their distinct failure mechanisms.
• Familiarity with modal response, random vibration, power spectral density (PSD), shock response spectra (SRS), and time-domain dynamic analysis.
• Ability to translate system-level requirements into component loads, analysis cases, test conditions, and verification requirements.
• Hands-on experience with strain gauges, accelerometers, thermocouples, and data-acquisition systems.
• Proficiency with MATLAB, Python, or equivalent tools for engineering calculations, automation, and test-data processing.
• Strong technical writing and communication skills.
• U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with missile, munition, air vehicle, propulsion, aerospace, or defense hardware exposed to severe mechanical and thermal environments.
• Experience evaluating printed circuit board dynamics, component attachment, solder-joint fatigue, and the structural effects of potting, underfill, or conformal coating.
• Experience developing qualification and acceptance test programs.
• Experience with nonlinear structural analysis, including contact, preload, plasticity, and transient dynamic response.
• Familiarity with fatigue-life methods, including S–N curves, mean-stress corrections, and cumulative-damage assessment.
• Experience correlating finite-element models with modal, strain, vibration, shock, and thermal-test data.
• Experience with environmental-test standards and laboratory test execution.
• Active U.S. government security clearance.

What Success Looks Like

You can take a system requirement or operating environment and turn it into a credible structural verification strategy. You understand that an analysis is only valuable when its assumptions are sound, its results are independently checked, and the conclusions are validated against real hardware.

You bring disciplined technical judgment to ambiguous problems, flag risk and uncertainty early, and drive analysis-to-test correlation until the team has a clear answer. You do not simply report whether hardware passed or failed—you help the team understand why, what to change, and how to deliver a more robust design.

Growth Opportunity

As Tiberius Aerospace advances from development into qualification and production, this role will take on increasing ownership of structural-verification strategy, analysis-and-test correlation, and qualification of mission-critical aerospace hardware. The position offers a direct path toward senior technical leadership in structures, environmental qualification, and hardware verification.

Compensation & Benefits

Tiberius Aerospace offers competitive base compensation commensurate with experience, equity participation, comprehensive health benefits, and a 401(k). Specific compensation will be discussed during the interview process.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Tiberius Aerospace is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, medical condition, genetic information, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Applicants who require a reasonable accommodation during the application process may contact kburchstead@tiberius.com.

Tiberius Aerospace participates in E-Verify.