Turbine Durability Engineer

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.