Senior DFX Engineer

AeroVironment

3d

About The Position

AV builds proven systems and the future of defense for the warfighter. The Senior DFX Engineer is the enterprise steward of lifecycle-driven design quality, ensuring AV products are buildable, testable, observable, reliable, affordable, and sustainable across their full operational life. Rather than owning individual programs, this role defines and governs how AV designs for reality across manufacturing, test, supply chain, cost, and obsolescence --so downstream crises are prevented, not fought.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related field
• 7+ years across hardware design, manufacturing, test, reliability/sustainment, or product realization
• Hands-on experience with Design-for-Manufacturability and/or Design-for-Test on production programs
• Experience influencing architecture, New Product Introduction (NPI), manufacturing & test readiness, and lifecycle planning
• Proven cross-discipline, lifecycle-level thinking
• U.S. Citizen, U.S. Permanent Resident (Green Card holder) or asylee/refugee status as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) required.
• Must be able to travel within the Continental U.S. and internationally when required.
• Must be willing to work on government contracts and have the ability to obtain a security clearance.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree in Engineering
• Aerospace defense, automotive, high_rate/commercial, production of high-reliability industrial product experience
• Demonstrated ability to institutionalize engineering standards and governance
• Ability to influence without formal authority
• Preferred Clearance - Secret

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the enterprise Design-for-X (DFX) framework governing manufacturability, testability & observability, reliability, supply-chain resilience, cost, and sustainment.
• Establish DFX standards, criteria, and maturity gates embedded into early architecture, SRR/PDR/CDR, configuration & release, and platform definition.
• Advise engineering and program leadership by participating in key design and architecture reviews, providing independent lifecycle risk assessments, and recommending balanced design trade-offs.
• Drive design reuse, modularity, and platform commonality through DFX architectures that enable reusable hardware, test/diagnostics, and manufacturing & sustainment models.
• Define and govern Design-for-Test and Design-for-Observability, guide products to include standardized BIT/BITE, self-test, health monitoring, telemetry, and fault isolation so systems can validate and report their own performance from development through fielded operations.
• Support bid & proposal (B&P) and capture by assessing manufacturability, testability, technology and part maturity, cost and supply-chain exposure, and obsolescence risk --ensuring what AV proposes can be built, tested, and sustained.
• Serve as the escalation and arbitration point for major lifecycle risks (DMSMS, manufacturing infeasibility, inadequate testability/observability, or excessive cost/supplier concentration).
• Define and maintain DFX KPIs (e.g., first-pass yield, test escape rates, repair/return metrics, NRE/recurring cost targets, DMSMS status) and routinely brief leadership on lifecycle health of key platforms.
• Will work with development teams to capture best practices and improve product reliability and capabilities.
• Design, deploy, and continuously improve enterprise DFX processes integrated into engineering workflows, design reviews, release & change control, and platform architecture.
• Translate DFX principles into repeatable, auditable, and scalable practices so lifecycle-driven design is organic to how AV develops products.
• Establish enterprise standards for testability and observability, making diagnostics, telemetry, and field-level debug design requirements, not afterthoughts.
• Familiarity with PLM/ERP/data workflows (so DFX outputs map into configuration/parts systems).
• Willingness to travel and work across locations; ability to be tactically assigned to projects.

Benefits

• AV offers an excellent benefits package including medical, dental vision, 401K with company matching, a 9/80 work schedule and a paid holiday shutdown.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level