Senior Project Engineer

About Barber-Nichols:
Barber-Nichols (BN) is a premier provider of custom turbomachinery solutions serving the Defense, Aerospace, Cryogenics, and Energy industries. Our team consists of industry leaders who collaborate closely with equally accomplished customers to deliver technologies that advance their markets and establish enduring partnerships. At BN, we foster a results-driven environment that values professional growth, rewards achievement, and supports innovation. From designing the blower for NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan to engineering critical components for the U.S. Navy’s MK-48 program, BN’s portfolio spans some of the most exciting and impactful projects in the world. For those seeking to contribute to impactful projects alongside a highly skilled team, BN offers an exceptional place to build your career.

Position Summary:

The Senior Staff Turbomachinery Engineer will lead a team of engineers to develop clean sheet turbomachines from specification to flight qualified hardware for our most challenging applications. Recent projects our team has led include successfully testing a molten salt pump for next generation nuclear reactors on FLiBe, delivering a blower that will ride on NASA’s Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan, development of a new oxygen fan and water pump for NASA, and successfully developing propellant turbopumps for multiple flight vehicles. The Senior Project Engineer is the technical lead for developing turbomachines for our customers with a focus on advanced energy, space, thermal management systems, defense and underwater propulsion systems that are the heart of our customer’s system.

Key Results Areas:

1) Resolve technical challenges through broad technical knowledge of turbomachinery and related electromechanical systems.

• Understand customer needs to support the conceptualization of new turbomachine designs to optimize customer’s system performance.
• Lead the technical engineering effort and apply engineering principles to define and analyze the design.
• Perform increasingly challenging calculations involving heat transfer, structural and rotating component stress analysis, aerodynamics, cycle analysis, component sizing, etc.

2) Lead Barber-Nichols most challenging projects to meet all customer requirements, including technical capability, schedule milestones, and budgetary constraints, with only high-level oversight by Principal and Chief Engineers.

• Develop project plans and hold accountability to ensure the product design is completed on-time and on-budget through execution of design reviews, development testing, and hardware qualification.
• Direct and review the work of other engineers and mechanical designers in the layout and detailed design tasks to ensure a cost effective and manufacturable design.
• Perform programmatic activities such as creating and maintaining project budgets, schedules and customer CDRls and SDRLs.

3) Effectively functions in a team environment to drive organizational success. Delegate work and provide oversight to more junior Project Engineers.

• Coordinate with our on-site manufacturing and technician groups to ensure successful projects and address manufacturing issues as they arise.
• Actively supports manufacturing and procurement during project execution.
• Address manufacturing issues as they arise and help develop process improvements.