Energetic Materials Engineer, Solid Propellant

About the Team

The Propulsion Team designs, builds, and flies the solid rocket motors that power our interceptor. We own the chemistry, the motor and grain design, the ground test campaigns, and the range operations.

About the Role

We are looking for a chemist or chemical engineer who will own our composite propellant: formulation, mix and cure process, ingredient sourcing, and characterization. You will report to the Head of Propulsion.

This is a hands-on role for someone who has already taken a composite propellant from formulation through motor flight or qualification, and who prefers cheap, well-understood chemistry to high-energy energetics or one-source materials.

Every formulation choice is also a unit-cost choice, and we expect you to design accordingly.

What You'll Do

• Own propellant formulation: composition tradeoffs, ingredient selection, and the cost-vs-performance calls that go with both.
• Develop the mix and cure process: vacuum mix profile, ingredient addition order, cure schedule, pot life.
• Source and technically qualify ingredients across the propellant supplier base. The Head of Supply Chain owns commercial terms.
• Characterize each formulation: burn rate at temperature, pressure exponent, density, mechanical properties, strain-to-failure, aging.
• Match propellant properties to motor architecture with the development engineer.
• Design the dual-pulse chemistry: pulse-1 and pulse-2 composition selection, mechanical and thermal compatibility, interpulse barrier interaction.
• Write the mix SOPs and qualification documentation.
• Own the chemistry side of facility safety and compliance: storage planning, hazardous-materials handling, ATF and AHJ documentation.

Skills We're Hiring For

• B.S. or M.S. in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or related.
• 5+ years hands-on composite-propellant formulation and mix process development. At least one propellant where you carried it from formulation through motor flight or qualification.
• Fluency with HTPB, AP, aluminum, curative, plasticizer, and bonding agent chemistry: ingredient interactions, cure mechanisms, mechanical property tradeoffs.
• Hands-on mix experience: vertical and planetary mixers, vacuum mixing, cast and cure cycle development.
• Working fluency with thermochemistry codes for predicting Isp, flame temperature, c*, and product species across a composition range.
• Hands-on burn rate measurement: strand burner, pressure exponent, temperature sensitivity.
• Mechanical property testing of cured propellant: uniaxial tensile, modulus, strain-to-failure across operating temperature.
• Real working network of composite-propellant ingredient suppliers across AP, HTPB, aluminum, and curative families.
• A real track record of meeting motor performance without reaching for exotic chemistry or one-source materials. No high-energy oxidizers, no nano-aluminum, no exotic binders.
• AI-native working style: daily use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or similar) for formulation tradeoff scripting, thermochemistry runs, and characterization data reduction.

Bonus Points For

• Direct dual-pulse propellant development.
• Aging and shelf-life qualification experience.
• Stood up a propellant mix facility from scratch.
• ATF, OSHA PSM, and EPA compliance experience for energetic-materials operations.
• Burn rate modifier and ballistic modifier formulation work.
• Out-of-domain chemistry background that gives you practical, first-principles intuition (polymer chemistry, battery formulation, hazardous-process work). We actively want people who can solve propellant problems without dragging legacy-prime habits with them.