Operational Performance Engineer, Mass Properties and Vehicle Performance

About this role

Mach Industries seeks an Operational Performance Engineer to own mass properties and vehicle-level performance tracking across autonomous defense platforms. You will manage mass budgets, center of gravity, inertia requirements, and broader performance domains—working across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, and flight test to keep Vehicle Leads informed of current vehicle status.

What you'll do

• Own vehicle mass properties including mass, CG, and moments/products of inertia across all configurations and mission states
• Manage subsystem and team-level mass budgets; deliver weekly CG status and mass-versus-budget reporting by subsystem
• Identify mass trends by group, growth rate, and risk to vehicle closure; support engineering trades with weight impact analysis
• Reconcile analytical predictions against actual part weights, CAD, and test data before build and flight
• Maintain vehicle performance baselines and budgets across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload domains
• Automate performance tracking and reporting in partnership with MDAO engineers; keep records traceable and reproducible

What they're looking for

• Mass properties analysis and vehicle mass budgeting
• Center of gravity and moment of inertia calculation and tracking
• Aerospace vehicle performance engineering and trade study analysis
• CAD and configuration management tools
• Data reconciliation and test-to-prediction correlation
• Automation and scripting for performance reporting
• Systems engineering and cross-disciplinary integration
• Flight test and hardware evaluation