ABOUT FIREFLY AEROSPACE

As an end-to-end space transportation company, Firefly Aerospace is on a mission to enable our world to launch, land, and operate in space – anywhere, anytime. Our launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles provide government and commercial customers with full mission services from low Earth orbit to the surface of the Moon and beyond. Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space. This position is located at our manufacturing and test facility in Briggs, TX north of Austin, TX.

SUMMARY

As Director of Innovation, you’ll lead early-stage technology development (TRL ~1 to ~6) across Firefly, helping maintain a fast-paced, fail-fast innovation mindset outside the constraints of production and quality control. Reporting to the CTO, you'll oversee planning, funding, empowering, and execution of R&D efforts. This includes identifying and prioritizing high-impact technologies in collaboration with programs and engineering, driving internal investment (IRAD), and converting that into customer-funded R&D (CRAD) through strategic engagement and proposals.

You’ll also establish and grow an innovation lab at Briggs, equipping it with tools and processes to enable quick-turn experimentation by cross-functional teams. Initial efforts will involve setting up the lab, hiring a lab manager and senior machinist, and borrowing engineering support to drive short, focused innovation sprints. As momentum and funding grow, the team may scale, but the core goal is to create a flexible, creative space for engineers to contribute to next-gen technologies while staying connected to production.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Collaboration with company directors, VPs, and PMs on defining key technologies that we need to be working on in the near term to secure our dominance in the future.
• Work with the CTO and Senior Leadership Team on a quarterly basis to continuously upgrade prioritizations on the technologies
• Maintaining this full innovation wish-list, listening well and establishing clear core requirements and developing ROIs in collaboration with the department(s) in need.
• Aggressively find funding from government sources to pay for the development, including writing white papers and proposals, and then selling and closing deals to bring in funding.
• Projecting that funding source and costs in the AOP for future year planning
• Evaluating the industry for existing solutions and providers.
• Managing short design cycle sprints with matrixed engineering teams to go from concept to proof of concept in short 6-12 week intervals. Sprints will include trade study, concept design/CAD/analysis, prototyping, test, and demonstration.
• Managing the development and operation of an innovation space used for brainstorming, designing, production, and test of this hardware. Collaborating with other company team members for support when the lab is not capable

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, or related engineering discipline.
• Strong listening and collaboration skills
• A broad understanding of engineering fundamentals across most disciplines and the ability to manage highly technical products in all areas.
• Trained in the SCRUM and sprint processes with proven experience in execution of quick turn spiral development of technology development that could extend from thermal systems to structures to avionics, to aerodynamics, to propulsion to name a few.
• 5+ years of focused, hands-on experience in a systems engineering oriented role through the full life cycle of a complex product development.
• Exceptional comprehension of first principles related to spacecraft and launch vehicle design, analysis, test, and operation.
• Strong working knowledge of Space & Missile Systems Center (SMC) and NASA Standards.
• Experience with Systems Engineering practices.
• Experience with leading small teams to define scope and drive product development.
• Experience in Requirements Management
• Experience in prototyping and machines both additive and subtractive
• Strong working knowledge of manufacturing, fabrication and assembly methods, production management tools, and quality control processes.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize and execute tasks under pressure.

Desired

• MS in Aerospace Engineering or Engineering Management.
• Knowledge of NASA systems engineering processes and procedures.
• Familiarity with Atlassian Confluence, Jira, BitBucket, and CAD.
• Willingness to travel domestically for meetings with key vendors or key industry events (~20%).

Firefly offers outstanding benefits for our employees, including generous health, dental and vision plans with low plan deductibles, parental leave, educational reimbursement, short term disability, pet Insurance, and flexible PTO options.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Firefly is governed based on merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.