Senior Propulsion Engineer - Combustion Devices (m/f/d)

Mission Brief You will be a senior technical contributor within Combustion Devices, responsible for high-fidelity combustion CFD and the physical understanding required to design, assess and mature liquid rocket engine combustion hardware. You will apply reactive-flow simulation, combustion fundamentals and test correlation to injectors, preburners , gas generators, ignition systems and main combustion chambers, ensuring that designs are performant, stable, thermally robust and ready for manufacture and hot-fire testing. Your Role in Our Space Mission: • Own and execute CFD analyses of reacting flows in liquid rocket engine combustion devices, from model definition and meshing through solution, verification, validation and technical recommendation. • Develop and apply premixed , partially premixed and non-premixed combustion models for rocket-relevant propellant systems and operating conditions. • Perform steady and transient RANS/URANS and, where justified, scale-resolving simulations such as LES to investigate mixing, ignition, flame stabilisation, combustion efficiency and unsteady heat release. • Model injector and chamber flows including atomisation, evaporation, multiphase effects, real-gas behaviour, conjugate heat transfer and wall heat flux where relevant to the design question. • Assess combustion stability and operability, including flame dynamics, pressure oscillations, injector coupling, acoustic interaction, chugging and high-frequency instability risks. • Build robust CFD workflows in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ and Ansys Fluent, including geometry preparation, meshing strategies, solver setup, automation, post-processing and model-quality documentation. • Correlate simulations against component, cold-flow and hot-fire test data; quantify model uncertainty and clearly define the limits of predictive confidence. • Translate CFD results into practical design decisions for injectors, chambers, preburners, gas generators, igniters, cooling concepts and combustion-device interfaces. • Work closely with design, thermal, structures, materials, test, engine systems and manufacturing teams to converge combustion-device designs and resolve multidisciplinary issues. • Plan analysis and validation activities, review work from colleagues and external partners, and contribute to technical reviews, development roadmaps and risk-retirement plans. • Advance combustion modelling methods, engineering standards and reusable best practices across the Propulsion organisation. Qualification Checklist • MSc or PhD in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, computational engineering or a comparable technical discipline. • Typically 5–10 years of professional experience in rocket propulsion, with substantial hands-on responsibility for combustion CFD and combustion-device development. • Deep knowledge of fundamental combustion physics, chemical kinetics, flame structure, turbulence–chemistry interaction, ignition and extinction phenomena. • Demonstrated experience modelling reactive premixed and non-premixed flows under rocket-engine-relevant pressure, temperature and mixture-ratio conditions. • Advanced proficiency in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ and/or Ansys Fluent for complex reacting-flow simulations; strong capability in meshing, solver selection, convergence assessment and post-processing. • Strong understanding of liquid rocket engine combustion devices, particularly injectors, preburners or gas generators, main combustion chambers, igniters and associated thermal environments. • Experience with CFD verification and validation, mesh and time-step sensitivity, uncertainty assessment and correlation to experimental or hot-fire data. • Proficiency in Python, MATLAB or a comparable language for automation