Load & Stress Engineer (all genders)

STARK

ABOUT US STARK is a new kind of defence technology company, revolutionizing the way autonomous systems are deployed across multiple domains. We design, develop and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are software-defined, mass-scalable, and cost-effective. This provides our operators with a decisive edge in highly contested environments. We’re focused on delivering deployable, high-performance systems. In a time of rising threats, STARK is bolstering the technological edge of NATO Allies and their Partners to deter aggression and defend Europe. YOUR MISSION As a Mechanical Design Engineer at STARK, you will be the architectural force behind the physical hardware that carries our cognitive core into the field. You will lead the design and development of complex components and assemblies, translating ambitious technical concepts into operational products that can withstand the rigors of contested environments. You will work hand-in-hand with our systems, stress, and electrical engineering teams, pairing rigorous mechanical design with rapid hardware iteration. You will be responsible for navigating fast-paced engineering projects with tight deadlines, ensuring that every bracket, housing, and structural element is optimized for performance and mass-scalability. This role is about ownership and leadership: taking a product from an initial whiteboard concept to a final, production-ready state. You will not just be making drawings; you will be defining the physical standards of the next generation of autonomous defence technology. RESPONSIBILITIES * CAD Development: Create and maintain high-fidelity models, assemblies, and detailed technical drawings using CATIA V5/V6 within the 3DEXPERIENCE environment. * Standards & Precision: Define and enforce best practices for parametric modeling, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T), and complex tolerance stack-ups to ensure assembly reliability. * Validation: Collaborate closely with stress engineers for load path validation and participate in critical Design Reviews (PDR/CDR) to ensure mission success. MANUFACTURING & PROCESS INTEGRATION * Material Selection: Drive decisive material and process selection, focusing on structural layout and manufacturability to meet aggressive weight and strength targets. * DFM/DfAM: Apply expert knowledge of Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), injection molding, CNC machining, and sheet metal fabrication to streamline the transition from prototype to series production. * Tooling & Testing: Design and develop critical operating equipment and specialized test benches required to validate subsystems and accelerate program velocity. * Cross-Functional Coordination & Supply Chain * Interdisciplinary Alignment: Collaborate with Electrical Engineering, Production, and Procurement to translate abstract product requirements into measurable quality objectives and repeatable manufacturing processes. * Supplier Engagement: Oversee technical engagement with external suppliers for structural components and secondary assemblies, ensuring design intent is maintained through delivery. * Execution: Identify blockers in the design-to-production pipeline and proactively push issues to resolution to maintain program momentum. QUALIFICATIONS * Experience: 2+ years of experience as a CAD Engineer or Mechanical Design Engineer with a proven focus on manufacturing processes and complex assemblies. * Background: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a comparable technical field. High proficiency in CATIA V5 (Part Design, Assembly Design, Generative Shape Design). * Mindset: Mission-driven, decisive, and pragmatic. Thrives in ambiguity. You act like an owner and would rather build and iterate than wait for permission. * Communication: High proficiency (C1/C2) in both English and German, capable of communicating complex technical context to both local technicians and international leadership. * Security: Must be a citizen of a NATO member state (due to export control and security regulations).

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. About the Role We are seeking a Lead Performance Automation Engineer to define and drive performance engineering strategy, tooling, and practices across large-scale, distributed, cloud-native platforms. This is a technical leadership role responsible for ensuring systems are: * Scalable * Reliable * Resilient under load * Optimised for performance and cost efficiency You will lead performance testing and engineering initiatives across multiple teams, embedding non-functional quality into every stage of the software lifecycle. Key Responsibilities 1. Performance Engineering Strategy & Leadership * Define and own the organisation-wide performance testing and engineering strategy. * Establish standards for: * Performance testing approaches * Workload modelling * Capacity planning * Introduce and scale performance engineering practices across multiple delivery teams. * Provide technical leadership and mentoring to QA and engineering teams on performance best practices. * Align performance goals with business SLAs, SLOs, and user experience expectations. 2. Performance Test Architecture & Automation * Design and implement scalable performance test frameworks and automation pipelines. * Lead adoption of tools such as: * Gatling, JMeter, k6, Locust or similar * Build reusable solutions for: * Load testing * Stress testing * Spike testing * Soak testing * Integrate performance testing into CI/CD pipelines for continuous validation. * Ensure performance tests are repeatable, reliable, and production-representative. 3. Workload Modelling & Test Design * Define realistic user workload models based on production data and usage patterns. * Design performance test scenarios reflecting: * Peak load * Concurrent users * Throughput and latency requirements * Apply risk-based prioritisation for performance testing. * Ensure coverage across: * APIs * Microservices * Data pipelines * Event-driven systems 4. Backend, API & Distributed System Performance * Lead performance validation for: * Microservices architectures * Event-driven systems (Kafka) * High-throughput APIs * Analyse latency, throughput, error rates, and bottlenecks across distributed systems. * Validate system behaviour under failure conditions and degraded environments. * Ensure horizontal scalability and resilience strategies are tested. 5. Cloud, Infrastructure & Scalability Testing * Validate performance across: * AWS cloud environments * Containerised platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) * Conduct capacity planning and infrastructure benchmarking. * Ensure systems scale efficiently using: * Auto-scaling * Load balancing * Distributed architectures * Evaluate performance of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) deployments. 6. Observability, Analysis & Bottleneck Resolution * Use observability tools to analyse system performance, including: * Metrics (Prometheus, Datadog) * Logs (ELK) * Traces (distributed tracing tools) * Identify and diagnose: * CPU, memory, I/O bottlenecks * Network latency issues * Database performance constraints * Collaborate with engineering teams to optimise system performance and architecture. 7. Non-Functional Quality Governance * Define and enforce performance SLAs, SLOs, and acceptance criteria. * Establish quality gates for performance within CI/CD pipelines. * Ensure performance requirements are validated before production release. * Drive adoption of performance testing standards across teams. * Support audit, compliance, and regulatory expectations in performance-critical systems. 8. Production Performance & Continuous Improvement * Analyse real production performance data to refine testing strategies. * Lead performance-related incident investigations and RCA activities. * Establish feedback loops between production observability and test environments. * Drive improvements in: * System responsiveness * Stability under load * Operational resilience 9. Metrics, Reporting & Optimisation * Define and track performance KPIs, including: * Response times * Throughput * Error rates * Resource utilisation * Build performance dashboards and reporting frameworks. * Drive continuous optimisation initiatives based on performance data. * Align performance metrics with business outcomes and user experience. Technology Environment Performance Testing Tools * Gatling, k6, JMeter, Locust (or similar) Languages * Java, Kotlin, Python, or JavaScript Architecture * Microservices, Event-driven systems, Kafka Cloud & Infrastructure * AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform CI/CD * GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins Observability * Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK, Distributed Tracing What We’re Looking For Essential * Proven experience as a Performance Test Lead / Performance Engineer / SDET * Strong experience defining performance testing strategies and frameworks * Hands-on expertise with modern performance testing tools * Deep understanding of: * Scalability and distributed system performance * Cloud-native architectures * Experience integrating performance testing into CI/CD pipelines * Strong skills in: * Performance analysis and bottleneck identification * Root cause analysis and system optimisation * Experience defining and tracking performance SLAs/SLOs and KPIs * Ability to lead and influence cross-team quality improvements Desirable * Experience in high-scale or regulated environments * Exposure to: * Chaos engineering * Resilience and fault injection testing * Experience with capacity planning and cost optimisation * Knowledge of security-performance interactions (e.g., encryption overhead) Personal Attributes * Strong systems thinking and analytical mindset * Ability to translate performance data into practical engineering improvements * Influential leader across engineering and product teams * Proactive and outcome-driven * Strong communication and stakeholder management skills Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.

Isar Aerospace

Mission Brief  You will be responsible for the structural analysis of entire assemblies belonging to our rocket’s primary and secondary structures. From trading design concepts to sizing and validating design iterations and examining the impact of manufacturing deviations, you will play an important role in guiding design decisions and pushing performance and reliability of our structures forward.  As a Senior Structural Analysis Engineer you will play a major role in improving our overall analysis and verification workflow by defining standards, sharing technical knowledge and reviewing your colleagues’ results and identifying action points.  Your Role in Our Space Mission:  * Perform detailed stress analysis of aerospace structures and components using both classical hand calculations and advanced finite element methods (FEM), mostly of CFRP structures * Identify failure scenarios and collaborate with design engineers to review and optimize structural designs   * Analise and provide possible solutions to manufacturing non-conformities * Develop test plans and support physical testing of components to verify sizing assumptions and qualify hardware.   * Prepare comprehensive stress analysis reports and documentation for internal/external use * Improve our standards and toolchain for structural verification * Be familiar with classical design standards and have experience in the use of CAD software * Provide technical mentorship and guidance to junior engineers within the team  Qualification Checklist  * Degree in the field of Engineering, Aerospace, Mechanical or (Computational) Mechanics, or any other related field. * At least 8 years of experience in analysing aerospace structures * Profound knowledge in classical hand-calculations and advanced FE Modelling of aerospace structures (Hypermesh, Optistruct etc) * High degree of independence and confidence in assessing and trading design risks * Strong engineering intuition with regards to load paths and failure mechanisms * Holistic perspective on development of structures * Fluent English  Bonus Skills * Multiple years of experience using CAD  * Good understanding of composite structures’ behaviour over a wide range of temperatures * Experience with winding & draping of carbon fibre (design or hands-on) * Experience with process induced deformations (PID) * Knowledge in quality standards, specifications and procedures around CFRP components * German language skills Benefits  * Employee Participation Program: Share in our success through our virtual company share program * 30 days of vacation: Enjoy the days off to relax and recharge * Company pension plan: Secure your future with our company pension plan, featuring a 20% employer contribution after the probation period * Subsidised lunch: Stay energised with delicious, subsidised lunches every day * Public transport ticket: Commute with ease using a fully financed Deutschlandticket * Sport Clubs membership: Stay fit with our sponsored sports club memberships (EGYM Wellpass) * Individual learning allowance: Grow your skills with an individual learning budget granted after the probation period * Childcare allowance: Receive a childcare allowance for your non-school-age children * And Much More! Discover additional perks and benefits when you join our team          Who we are We are Isar Aerospace and we are at the forefront of New Space building a modern space business to enable faster, better and cheaper access to space. Our mission is to help democratise space and use it for good in order to improve life on Earth now and for the future generations. We are a fast-growing company aiming to provide sustainable and environmentally friendly launch solutions for small and medium-sized satellites and constellations into Low Earth Orbit. The company is privately funded by world-leading technology investors with strong commitment and support and our team is made of driven and talented people with a real passion for space innovation. We're making rockets in a way that hasn't been done before disrupting a traditional industry. If you are up for the challenge, want to work on cutting-edge projects and be part of a team changing the world for better, come, join us and launch your career! Want to find out more about us? Visit www.isaraerospace.com Data Protection We process your personal data for the purpose of managing the recruitment process and assessing your application. For detailed information on how your data is processed, including your rights, please refer to our Privacy Policy. Disclaimer Isar Aerospace SE is an equal-opportunity employer committed to fairness and inclusivity. We do not prioritize any specific religion, gender, nationality, or background. Due to security clearance requirements, affiliations with countries listed under § 13 para. 1 no. 17 SÜG may affect the application process. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply. We use Metaview to record interview audio so our team can review it later and stay focused during the conversation. We will record interviews only if you opt in. Please note that we will request your consent separately during the interview process. Participation is completely voluntary and will not affect your application in any way. For more information on how we process your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy