{"id":3464144,"url":"https://alion.io/job/hypersonica-chief-engineer","title":"Chief Engineer","company":{"id":678356,"name":"Hypersonica","domain":"hypersonica.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/hypersonica","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":44,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":125,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Munich, Germany"],"countries":["DE"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":88000,"max_usd":210000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":841},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-06T09:56:14Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-06","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T05:52:46Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":24,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":24},"description":"That is where you come in.\nAs Chief Engineer, you will be one of the most important technical leaders at Hypersonica. You will hold the vehicle in your head as a complete system and take responsibility for ensuring that what we design can actually work, integrate, be tested and ultimately fly.\nThis is not a role for someone who wants to govern engineering from a distance. You will work directly with exceptional engineers, get deep into difficult technical problems and make consequential decisions with incomplete information. You will challenge assumptions, resolve conflicts between disciplines and keep the overall architecture coherent as the vehicle evolves at pace.\nWe hire for talent, not rigid boxes. You may have grown through Systems Engineering, GNC, avionics, flight controls, vehicle design or another deeply technical discipline. What matters is that you have developed the breadth, judgement and technical credibility to make decisions at whole-vehicle level.\nIf you have spent your career building systems that people initially thought were too difficult, too ambitious or too fast to deliver, we want to hear from you.\nWhat you'll do\nOwn the technical integrity of Hypersonica’s flight vehicles from system concept through design, integration, test and flight. \nDefine and continuously evolve the overall vehicle architecture, ensuring that mission objectives translate into a coherent physical and functional system. \nAct as the senior technical authority across vehicle-level engineering decisions, trade-offs, interfaces and risk. \nEnsure GNC, avionics, electronics, software, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal systems, power and payloads work together as a single integrated vehicle. \nDrive the definition and decomposition of mission and system requirements, focusing on the requirements that genuinely determine whether the vehicle succeeds. \nOwn the critical interfaces between systems and resolve technical conflicts when optimisation within one discipline damages performance somewhere else. \nLead major system-level trades around performance, mass, power, thermal constraints, controllability, reliability, manufacturability and operational capability. \nWork closely with GNC and avionics teams to ensure sensing, estimation, control, computing, actuation and vehicle dynamics form a robust closed-loop system. \nChallenge designs from first principles rather than accepting assumptions because they are conventional or inherited from previous programmes. \nLead technical readiness for major design reviews, integration milestones and flight tests. \nUse test and flight data aggressively, turning unexpected behaviour and failures into design improvements rather than paperwork. \nWork directly with Manufacturing and AIT to make sure the vehicle being designed can actually be built, integrated, tested and iterated quickly. \nMake difficult technical decisions when information is incomplete, balancing engineering rigour with the speed required to deliver breakthrough capability. \nWho you are\nAn exceptional multidisciplinary engineer who naturally thinks at system and vehicle level rather than only within a single subsystem. \nDeeply technically credible, with a strong foundation in areas such as Systems Engineering, GNC, avionics, flight controls, vehicle architecture or complex aerospace system design. \nExperienced taking complex aerospace, defence, space, autonomous or similarly high-consequence systems from concept into real integrated hardware. \nStrong in system architecture, requirements, interfaces, integration, verification and technical risk. \nComfortable reasoning about closed-loop vehicle behaviour, including the relationship between vehicle dynamics, sensors, estimation, control, actuators and onboard computing. \nAble to understand a difficult technical problem quickly, identify the assumptions that actually matter and drive the team towards an answer. \nExperienced making significant engineering trade-offs across multiple disciplines rather than optimising one component in isolation. \nComfortable moving between first-principles technical discussion and major programme-level decisions without losing depth. \nWilling to get personally involved when a problem matters. You do not need a large team, perfect information or an established process before you can make progress. \nAble to distinguish engineering rigour from engineering bureaucracy. \nConfident challenging exceptional specialists in their own disciplines while remaining open enough to change your own mind when the evidence demands it. \nCalm when things go wrong, intellectually honest when something is not understood and relentless about finding the real answer. \nMotivated by the opportunity to build sovereign European defence capability and comfortable working on systems where the consequences of engineering decisions genuinely matter. \nYou might have come from\nThere is no single route to becoming the right Chief Engineer for Hypersonica.\nYou may currently be a Chief Engineer, Systems Architect, Head of Systems Engineering, GNC Lead, Avionics Lead, Flight Controls Lead, Vehicle Architect or Principal Engineer.\nYou may have spent your career in missiles, high-speed flight, combat aircraft, spacecraft, autonomous systems or another environment where complex physical systems need to work first time.\nWe are less interested in your current title than in the scale of the technical problems you have personally solved.\nWhat we offer\nThe opportunity to hold genuine technical ownership of one of Europe’s most ambitious defence engineering programmes. \nA company early enough that your decisions will materially shape the vehicles, engineering organisation and technical culture we build. \nDirect access to the problem. Short decision paths, minimal bureaucracy and engineers empowered to solve engineering problems. \nDaily collaboration with exceptional people across GNC, avionics, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, manufacturing, test and defence. \nThe freedom to challenge convention, build from first principles and move quickly when the evidence supports it. \nThe resources and ambition to attempt things that would take significantly longer in traditional aerospace organisations. \nThe opportunity to see your decisions move from a whiteboard, into hardware and ultimately into flight. \nThe person we are looking for\nWe are not looking for someone to simply approve other people’s engineering.\nWe are looking for the person engineers turn to when the disciplines disagree, the data is incomplete, the deadline is real and somebody has to understand the whole system well enough to make the call.\nSomeone who can bring clarity to complexity without slowing the organisation down.\nIf that sounds like you, come and build it with us.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6788,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Space & Aerospace","Missiles"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-29T14:54:44Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":24,"expected_fill_days":125,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/hypersonica-chief-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/hypersonica-chief-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-31T07:05:52Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":10454,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":678356},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=678356"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhypersonica-chief-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fhypersonica-chief-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fhypersonica-chief-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/hypersonica-chief-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhypersonica-chief-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3464144}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"hypersonica.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3464144},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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