Operational Performance Engineer, Mass Properties and Vehicle Performance

About the company

Mach provides a full-stack autonomy platform that enables off-road equipment OEMs to deploy driverless, AI-powered machinery across agriculture, defense, landcare and other rugged industries.

About this role

ABOUT MACH INDUSTRIES Founded in 2023, Mach Industries is a rapidly growing defense technology company focused on developing next-generation autonomous defense platforms. At the core of our mission is the commitment to delivering scalable, decentralized defense systems that enhance the strategic capabilities of the United States and its allies. With a workforce of approximately 350 employees, we operate with startup agility and ambition. Our vision is to redefine the future of warfare through cutting-edge manufacturing, innovation at speed, and unwavering focus on national security. We are dedicated to solving the next generation of warfare with lethal systems that deter kinetic conflict and protect global security. THE ROLE Mach Industries is seeking an Operational Performance Engineer to build and maintain vehicle mass properties and vehicle-level performance tracking across multiple programs. You will be responsible for mass, center of gravity, and inertia for every supported vehicle, manage subsystem mass budgets, and ensure each vehicle's mass properties close against its requirements. You will also maintain the broader vehicle performance picture across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload, so that Vehicle Leads and engineering teams always have an authoritative, current answer to where the vehicle stands. Scope and autonomy in this role scale with experience; you will begin by establishing mass properties on a single weight-critical program and grow into broader ownership across programs. For weight-critical vehicles, mass properties is a full-time fight. You will safeguard the CG envelope and moment of inertia requirements as design trades are made and the vehicle is laid out, report weekly status and trends by subsystem, and evaluate the impact of actual part weights before build and flight. For smaller vehicles, you will provide the same rigor scaled to program maturity. Beyond mass properties, you will maintain performance baselines, budgets, margins, and assumptions across all performance domains, reconcile predictions against discipline analyses, CAD, as-built hardware, and test data, and communicate the current performance picture to vehicle teams. This role is part of Operational Performance within Mach's Vehicle Design and Performance organization, alongside Conceptual Design and MDAO. Conceptual Design creates, MDAO enables, and Operational Performance assesses. You will bring together inputs from Mechanical, Propulsion, Aerodynamics, GNC, Configuration Management, Manufacturing, and Flight Test to build a clear, current picture of vehicle performance, and you will partner with MDAO engineers on shared tooling and automation. The ideal candidate has dedicated mass properties experience on at least one complex aerospace vehicle program and understands the interactions between mass properties and every other performance domain. More experienced candidates will take full ownership across programs immediately; earlier-career candidates will build toward that scope through hands-on work on a single weight-critical program. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Own vehicle mass properties, including mass, center of gravity, and moments and products of inertia, across configurations and mission states for all supported programs. - Own the vehicle mass fraction and CG envelope, ensuring mass properties satisfy vehicle-level requirements. - Own moment of inertia tracking against Level 1 vehicle requirements for pitch, yaw, and roll. - Assign, manage, and enforce subsystem and team-level mass budgets in coordination with configuration management and integration teams. - Deliver weekly CG status and mass-versus-budget reporting by subsystem and team. - Deliver weekly mass trend analysis, identifying which groups are trending heavy, the rate of growth, and the risk to vehicle closure. - Support engineering trades as they pertain to weight impact, providing mass property data and analysis to inform design decisions. - Own analytical-versus-actual weight reconciliation by obtaining actual part weights, evaluating the impact on the vehicle, and assessing readiness before build and flight. - Maintain vehicle and subsystem performance baselines, budgets, margins, and assumptions across aerodynamics, propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload from early design through flight test. - Assess how design decisions and configuration changes affect vehicle-level performance across all domains. - Reconcile predictions with discipline analyses, CAD, as-built hardware, and ground and flight test data. - Automate performance tracking and reporting, partnering with MDAO engineers on shared tooling and data pipelines. - Keep performance records traceable and reproducible, and communicate status, uncertainty, and findings to Vehicle Leads and engineering teams. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS - Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field. - 2+ years of relevant experience in vehicle performance, mass properties, vehicle design, flight dynamics, systems engineering, or a related discipline. - Dedicated mass properties experience, including weight tracking, CG and inertia accounting, or mass budget management, on at least one complex aerospace vehicle program. - Experience with configuration-controlled mass property records and multi-team mass budget management. - Experience assessing weight impact of design trades and configuration changes at the vehicle level. - Strong understanding of vehicle performance and the interactions among mass properties, aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, power, and controls. - Experience using Python, Julia, MATLAB, or a similar technical computing language for engineering analysis. - Ability to organize inputs from multiple disciplines, spot inconsistencies, and explain what they mean at the vehicle level. - Ability to communicate analyses w