Chief Engineer

Help Build Europe's Hypersonic Capability At Hypersonica , we’re redefining what’s possible in European defence technology. We exist to deliver speed, resilience, and technological independence at a pace that sets a new standard. We are a small, elite team working on problems that matter, and solving them fast. By joining Hypersonica , you’re not stepping into a predefined role. You’re joining a talent dense environment where every individual shapes the direction of the company. Our philosophy is to hire a small number of exceptional people with broad, deep technical capability, strong judgement, and the ability to operate autonomously. We hire for talent, not rigid boxes. This role represents a business need, but the way it evolves will be shaped by the individual. If you’ve achieved what others said was impossible, or you bring a unique combination of skills that doesn’t fit a traditional mould, we want to hear from you. The work you do here directly contributes to Europe’s technological independence. That is where you come in. As 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. This 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. We 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. If 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. What you'll do Own the technical integrity of Hypersonica’s flight vehicles from system concept through design, integration, test and flight. Define and continuously evolve the overall vehicle architecture, ensuring that mission objectives translate into a coherent physical and functional system. Act as the senior technical authority across vehicle-level engineering decisions, trade-offs, interfaces and risk. Ensure GNC, avionics, electronics, software, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal systems, power and payloads work together as a single integrated vehicle. Drive the definition and decomposition of mission and system requirements, focusing on the requirements that genuinely determine whether the vehicle succeeds. Own the critical interfaces between systems and resolve technical conflicts when optimisation within one discipline damages performance somewhere else. Lead major system-level trades around performance, mass, power, thermal constraints, controllability, reliability, manufacturability and operational capability. Work closely with GNC and avionics teams to ensure sensing, estimation, control, computing, actuation and vehicle dynamics form a robust closed-loop system. Challenge designs from first principles rather than accepting assumptions because they are conventional or inherited from previous programmes. Lead technical readiness for major design reviews, integration milestones and flight tests. Use test and flight data aggressively, turning unexpected behaviour and failures into design improvements rather than paperwork. Work directly with Manufacturing and AIT to make sure the vehicle being designed can actually be built, integrated, tested and iterated quickly. Make difficult technical decisions when information is incomplete, balancing engineering rigour with th