Senior Vibrations Engineer

About the role

Rocket Lab is seeking a Senior Vibrations Engineer to support the Neutron launch vehicle program. You will lead analysis, design validation, and improvement activities for vehicle loads and environments, ensuring the structural integrity of critical components.

Key responsibilities

• Define, process, and interpret static and dynamic ground‑test and flight data, including sensor selection and data acquisition.
• Determine environmental loads such as random vibration, shock, quasi‑static, acoustic, pressure, and thermal conditions.
• Perform dynamic simulations (modal, acoustic, random vibration, sine harmonic, transient) and develop test requirements for vehicle subsystems.
• Validate and document structural analyses of primary and secondary launch‑vehicle structures, including finite‑element model verification, material selection, trade‑off studies, and mass optimization.
• Introduce new theory and tools, establish best practices in dynamics and load derivation, conduct peer reviews, and mentor junior engineers.

Required profile

• 7+ years of industry experience in aerospace, automotive, or marine sectors.
• Strong physics‑based problem‑solving approach.
• Demonstrated experience with vibration and structural dynamics analysis.

Required skills

• Static and dynamic test data analysis
• Sensor selection and data acquisition
• Environment determination (random vibration, shock, quasi‑static, acoustic, pressure, thermal)
• Dynamic simulations (modal, acoustic, random vibration, sine harmonic, transient)
• Finite‑element model verification and validation
• Material selection
• Trade‑off studies
• Mass optimization