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Job Title: Stress Engineer

Location: Wichita, KS

Onsite/ Remote: Onsite

Job Description

In this role, you will be a critical member of our structural integrity team, ensuring that aircraft components and systems meet all regulatory, safety, and operational requirements regarding fatigue, crack growth, and residual strength. You will apply advanced fracture mechanics principles to predict the life of metallic and composite structures under complex operational loading environments, establishing inspection intervals that guarantee safety-of-flight throughout the aircraft lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

Structural Evaluation: Perform detailed fatigue and damage tolerance (F&DT) analyses on primary and secondary aircraft structures using analytical and computational methods.

Crack Growth Modeling: Develop crack growth curves and calculate residual strength for complex structural configurations under spectrum loading conditions.

Finite Element Analysis (FEA): Build and refine detailed stress and fracture mechanics FE models to extract stress intensity factors ($K$) and stress distributions.

Spectrum Development: Author and review operational flight load spectrums based on flight test data, fleet tracking information, and design specifications.

Regulatory Compliance: Ensure all designs and analyses comply with relevant regulatory requirements (e.g., FAA 14 CFR 25.571, EASA CS-25.571). Prepare and review compliance documentation for certification.

Testing Support: Support structural testing (component and full-scale fatigue tests) by predicting failure locations, determining sensor placement, and correlating test results with analytical models.

Fleet Support & Maintenance: Provide engineering dispositions for cracked or damaged fleet structures and develop structural repair data that incorporates damage tolerance evaluations.

Mentorship: Guide and mentor junior engineers, establishing best practices and technical standards for the structural analysis team.

Technical Skills & Competencies

Fracture Mechanics: Deep understanding of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), elastic-plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM), and fatigue crack initiation/propagation.

Software Proficiency: Hands-on experience with industry-standard analysis tools:

F&DT Tools: NASGRO, AFGROW, or proprietary Boeing F&DT codes.

FEA Tools: NASTRAN/PATRAN, Abaqus, or ANSYS.

Materials Knowledge: understanding of aerospace materials (e.g., Aluminum alloys, Titanium, High-strength steels) and their behavioral properties under fatigue and corrosive environments. Knowledge of composite delamination/disbond growth mechanisms is a plus.

Standards & Regulations: Familiarity with military standards (e.g., Joint Service Specification Guide JSSG-2006) for defense roles, or commercial regulations for civil aviation.

Qualifications & Experience

Basic Qualifications (Required):

Education: Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Mechanical, or Civil Engineering (or a closely related discipline) from an accredited institution.

Experience: Minimum of 5 8 years of experience in structural analysis within the aerospace industry, with a primary focus on Fatigue and Damage Tolerance (F&DT).

Analytical Background: Demonstrated experience writing technical reports and structural substantiation documentation.

Preferred Qualifications (Desired):

Advanced Degree: Master's or Ph.D. in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering with a thesis focus on fracture mechanics or structural durability.

Boeing Experience: Familiarity with Boeing design philosophies, internal structural manuals, and proprietary software suites.

DER/UM Potential: Experience working directly with regulatory authorities (FAA/EASA) or holding Designated Engineering Representative (DER) / Unit Member (UM) status is highly desirable.

Soft Skills & Work Attributes

Problem-Solving: Exceptionally strong analytical abilities with a rigorous attention to detail.

Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills to articulate complex technical risks and solutions to multidisciplinary teams, leadership, and regulatory bodies.

Collaboration: Ability to work dynamically within a fast-paced integrated product team (IPT) environment.