Lead Hypersonic Re-Entry Engineer

Hop Aero is a venture-backed startup building rockets that deliver cargo anywhere on Earth in minutes. Our mission is to enable resilient global logistics to protect and improve our way of life. Our founding team has prior experience founding a satellite startup and taking it to orbit, launching 20+ Falcon 9 missions at SpaceX, and leading engineering teams at some of the world's most advanced aerospace organizations. The company is well-capitalized through venture funding and government contracts.

We're hiring a Lead Hypersonic Reentry Engineer to own the analysis, design, and development of Hop Aero's atmospheric reentry capability.

This is a foundational technical role spanning hypersonic aerodynamics, aerothermal environments, thermal protection, trajectory trades, vehicle design, testing, and flight-hardware development. You will help define how our vehicles survive high-speed atmospheric flight and repeated reentry while remaining practical, manufacturable, and rapidly reusable.

You should be comfortable building first-principles models, running CFD, evaluating TPS concepts, working with structures and GNC teams, designing experiments, and using test data to close the loop between simulation and real hardware.

This is not purely a CFD or thermal-analysis role. You will be expected to make vehicle-level engineering decisions, own hardware and test programs, and help take the reentry system from early analysis through flight.

Serve as the responsible engineer for hypersonic reentry, aerothermal environments, and thermal-protection systems Perform CFD and other high-fidelity analysis for high-speed atmospheric flight Develop aerodynamic and aerothermal databases for use by GNC, structures, propulsion, and vehicle-design teams Evaluate and select TPS architectures, materials, coatings, insulation systems, and attachment concepts Perform coupled aero-thermal-structural analysis to inform vehicle geometry and hardware design Define and execute material, coupon, component, and subsystem test campaigns Correlate analytical models with ground-test and flight-test data Translate reentry environments into requirements for structures, propulsion, avionics, GNC, and vehicle systems Own hypersonic reentry technical risks through design reviews, test-readiness reviews, and flight-readiness reviews 5-10 years of relevant experience in hypersonics, reentry, high-speed aerodynamics, aerothermal engineering, thermal protection, or closely related fields

Strong understanding of compressible flow, hypersonic aerodynamics, heat transfer, boundary layers, shock interactions, and high-temperature gas dynamics

Understanding of thermal-protection materials, insulation systems, structural heating, and thermal interfaces

Ability to plan experiments, interpret aerodynamic and thermal test data, and correlate models against real measurements

Ability to work directly with GNC, structures, propulsion, manufacturing, materials, and test teams

Must be a US Person under ITAR - Hop Aero will not sponsor visas for this role.

Experience with arc-jet, plasma, wind-tunnel, shock-tunnel, or other high-enthalpy testing Experience with ceramic, metallic, ablative, or composite TPS materials Experience with coupled CFD/FEA or conjugate heat-transfer analysis Experience developing aerodynamic or aerothermal databases across large flight envelopes Experience taking reentry hardware from analysis through ground test and flight Competitive salary and meaningful stock options Healthcare, office meals & snacks