Head, Structures

Job description

About Canada Rocket Company Canada Rocket Company is developing Canada's first medium-lift launch vehicle. We are a team of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, ArianeGroup, Pangea Propulsion, Tesla, MDA, and more, bringing over a century of combined launch and space systems experience back to Canada. Our mission is to provide reliable, independent access to space for Canada and its allies in a rapidly expanding global market. Our approach is defined by pragmatic engineering: We utilize a single 725 kN engine that scales from light- to medium-lift via engine clustering. We lean on simple, proven technologies to reach orbit faster, avoiding the pitfalls of complex or novel designs. We test early and often, catching problems on the bench instead of at the pad. Backed by over $20M in funding secured within our first four months, including the largest all-Canadian seed round in the sector and an $8.3M Department of National Defence grant, we are moving with the speed and institutional backing required to meet Canada’s orbital launch needs. About the role Canada Rocket Company is building a sovereign launch capability for Canada. We're looking for a Head of Structures to build and lead the team responsible for the structural backbone of our launch vehicle This is a foundational leadership role: you'll own the strategy, design authority, and delivery of the major load and pressure bearing systems that determine the vehicle’s mass efficiency, manufacturability, robustness, and ultimately its path to orbit. You’ll build the structures organization around program needs in close partnership with vehicle leadership, system architects, and adjacent engineering leads, ensuring the team has the right capabilities across design, analysis, materials, manufacturing, and test. If you want to shape the structural backbone of an entire launch vehicle program from the ground up, this is the role. What you'll do Define and execute the structural engineering strategy for Canada Rocket Company's orbital launch vehicle, spanning architecture, design, analysis, material selection, manufacturing approach, test, and qualification Own the development of the vehicle’s major structural elements, including propellant tanks, thrust structures, interstages, fairings, and other load-bearing assemblies, from early concept through flight hardware. Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing structure, thermal and mechanical engineering team, establishing hiring plans, engineering processes, and a culture of rigour and ownership. Drive structural design and sizing across static, dynamic, thermal, acoustic, vibration, buckling, fatigue, fracture, and coupled load environments, ensuring performance across the full mission lifecycle. Partner closely with propulsion, fluids, mechanisms, manufacturing, integration, and test teams to ensure structural solutions are well integrated at the vehicle level Collaborate with the Mission, Systems, and GNC teams to proper establish and classify requirements, loads, and envelopes ensuring mission objectives can be met Lead material and process selection for structural systems, including metallic and composite approaches where appropriate, with clear rationale tied to performance, manufacturability, cost, quality, and rate capability. Establish the structural analysis, verification, and test approach, including margins policy, calculation discipline, FEM/FEA strategy, test correlation, development test campaigns, and qualification logic. Establish and maintain structural design and analysis standards appropriate for flight and ground safety Drive design-for-manufacture and design-for-assembly decisions, working closely with production and supply chain to ensure practical, repeatable, and scalable fabrication methods. Collaborate with vehicle leadership and system architects to make sound trade-offs between mass, robustness, manufacturability, logistics, schedule, and cost. Contribute hands-on to structural/mechanical/thermal design, technical reviews, analysis direction, and critical problem-solving. Qualifications Required 10+ years of experience in structural design, analysis, and development for high-performance aerospace or similarly demanding hardware, with a meaningful portion in a technical leadership capacity. Deep experience with primary structures for vehicles, aircraft, spacecraft, launch systems, or other weight-critical systems operating under complex load environments. Strong understanding of structural mechanics, including strength of materials, stability, buckling, fatigue, fracture, dynamics, joints, and load paths, with sound engineering judgment grounded in first principles. Experience leading structural development from concept through detailed design, manufacturing, test, and validation. Direct experience in design and manufacture of both small and large assemblies including weldments and bolted interfaces Experience making material and manufacturing process decisions for structural hardware, with an understanding of how those choices affect mass, cost, schedule, quality, and production scalability Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, particularly in environments requiring close integration between design, analysis, manufacturing, test, and systems engineering. Preferred Direct experience with launch vehicle, propulsion structure, pressure vessel, cryogenic tank, interstage, fairing, or other aerospace structural systems. Hands-on experience with metallic primary structures, weldments, machined structures, formed structures, friction stir welding, bonded assemblies, and the fixturing required Experience with finite element analysis and structural test correlation, including development and interpretation of detailed and system-level models. Familiarity with qualification and acceptance strategies for aerospace structures, including proof, burst, modal, vibration, acoustic, and combined-load testing. Experience operating in a rapid hardware development environment where iterative design-build-test cycles are central to the engineering culture. Exposure to space and aerospace loads and structural analysis standards. Hold an advanced degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related field.