Turbine Durability Engineer

Job Description

The Senior Hot Section Durability Engineer is a technical leader responsible for ensuring combustor and turbine gas-path components meet time-on-wing, repairability, and Hot Section Refurbishment Interval (HSRI) requirements while maintaining performance, fuel efficiency, manufacturability, and cost goals. This role spans the full product life cycle-from early concept design and optimization through development engine testing, certification, field support, and aftermarket engineering.

Hot Section Durability Engineers design and assess advanced high-temperature hardware such as turbine airfoils, blade outer air seals (BOAS), combustor liner panels, and cast heat exchangers.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead durability strategy for turbine and combustor components, ensuring compliance with time-on-wing, repairability, and HSRI targets.
• Responsible for design and assessment of turbine airfoils, BOAS, combustor liners including internal cooling schemes, film cooling technologies, thermal barrier coatings, and advanced materials.
• Develop and execute analyses of varying complexity, including:
  • Mechanical, time-dependent damage predictions (creep, oxidation, TBC spallation, TMF).
  • Full conjugate heat transfer (CHT) and coupled aerothermal-structural simulations.
  • Reduced-order empirical models and 1D thermal models for rapid design iteration.
• Evaluate the durability impact of complex internal cores, cooling geometries, and advanced manufacturing processes.
• Conduct and lead root-cause investigations using new, returned, and repaired hardware to understand field performance, distress progression, and failure mechanisms.
• Provide technical leadership in design reviews, safety boards, and program milestones; mentor junior engineers on durability methods and best practices.
• Support manufacturing and supply chain by understanding process capabilities, anticipated variability, and implications for durability and quality.
• Develop and refine internal tools, models, and methodologies to accelerate durability assessments and improve prediction fidelity.

Required Technical Expertise

• Deep understanding of fluid mechanics and heat transfer, including convection, conduction, radiation, and aerothermal loads on hot-section components.
• Strong knowledge of material properties and high-temperature distress mechanisms, including:
  
  • Thermal barrier coating (TBC) spallation
  • Bond coat and substrate oxidation
  • Airfoil creep
  • Thermomechanical fatigue (TMF), LCF/HCF interactions
• Familiarity with manufacturing processes and their variability, including:
  
  • Core die tooling and internal passage formation
  • Investment casting of superalloys
  • Advanced coating systems
  • Cooling hole drilling and finishing processes
• Ability to model durability impacts of environmental and mission factors, such as sand ingestion, corrosion, and high-cycle thermal transients.
• Proficiency with finite element analysis (FEA) and heat transfer tools; experience with conjugate analyses and coupled physics is preferred.
• Experience with commercial FEA software (e.g., ANSYS Structural and Thermal Analysis using both Workbench AND ADPL) and life analysis codes.
• Hand on Experience in using CAD tools like NX or Creo;
• Pogramming capabilities in Python and MatLab, or the equivalent;

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, or related field; Master's or PhD strongly preferred.
• 12 years of experience in hot-section turbine, combustor, or high-temperature component durability.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex durability analyses, investigations, and cross-functional decision making.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence design, manufacturing, and program leadership.
• U.S. citizenship is required due to the nature of defense contracts.