Aerospace Engineer jobs: skills, pay and how to get hired

What an aerospace engineer does

An aerospace engineer, a Luft- und Raumfahrtingenieur in German ads, works on things that fly: aircraft, helicopters, engines, drones, satellites and launchers, and the parts and systems inside them. Most specialise early: structures and stress, aerodynamics, propulsion, flight controls and other systems, flight test, certification, or the engineering that keeps aircraft in service. The work runs from design and analysis to tests, the paperwork that shows a design is safe, and support to production and airlines.

Every change to a flying product is documented, checked by someone else and shown to an authority, so the work moves more carefully than in many other industries. That care is the job, not an obstacle to it.

Some titles sit next to this one. The mechanical engineer designs machines and products on the ground with the same basics; the quality manager runs the quality system that aerospace firms are audited on; the embedded software engineer writes the software that runs in avionics. Aircraft mechanics and the German Fluggerätmechaniker are trained trades, and pilots fly; none of them is covered here. The steps from graduate aerospace engineer to head of aerospace engineering are in the career paths of this role.

Aviation authorities differ by country, and each country's section names its own. What you read here describes the work and is not engineering, legal or career advice.

The skills the ads ask for

We read a sample of the ads every day and count the skills they name. On a computer, hover a skill in the text to see its share; on a phone, the table has the same figures.

Design work asks for 3D CADModel parts and assemblies in the 3D CAD system of the programme, such as CATIA or Siemens NX, with clean drawings., analysis work for FEABuild, check and explain a finite element model, and know when a hand calculation is the better check. and structural analysisShow that a structure carries its loads with margin, by hand and with models., and flow work for CFDSet up a flow simulation, judge its mesh and results, and compare them with tests. and aerodynamicsUnderstand lift, drag, stability and loads well enough to discuss them with specialists.. Light structures bring compositesKnow how fibre composites are designed, made, inspected and repaired, and how they fail., and complex aircraft bring systems engineeringWork with requirements, interfaces and models across a system, often with SysML-based tools. and requirementsWrite, trace and verify requirements from the aircraft down to a part. that are traced to tests. MATLABModel and analyse loads, flight dynamics or test data, and automate checks. and PythonAutomate analysis, process test data and script the tools around your models. run through analysis and test data, and airworthinessKnow how a design is shown to be safe to fly and what the authority expects to see. knowledge runs through everything: how a design is shown to be safe.

The tools are named side by side and none is a must everywhere: CATIA, Siemens NX and other 3D CAD systems for design; Ansys, Abaqus and Nastran for structures; Ansys Fluent, OpenFOAM and other codes for flow; requirement tools such as DOORS. The standards are international: the AS9100Work within the international aerospace quality standard: records, changes and controlled processes. quality standard for aviation, space and defence firms, and DO-178C and DO-254Know what the international standards for airborne software and electronic hardware ask of a project. for airborne software and electronic hardware. Firms work under a quality systemHandle non-conformances and their root causes with the quality team., with work packagesPlan your work packages against the programme's milestones and report risks early., and much of the job is working across disciplinesWork across design, analysis, manufacturing, test and certification on one product. and explaining analysesExplain an analysis to a chief engineer, a supplier and an authority's specialist., in EnglishThe working language of aerospace programmes, standards and most authorities' documents. and often GermanAsked for in many German aerospace ads, next to English, which most of them ask for too..

Where the jobs are, country by country

Each country below has its own figures: which cities have the most jobs in our list, whether the number is going up or down, how often ads offer remote or hybrid work, the titles used in the country, and pay ranges from published research, in the local currency.

The aviation authorities are named side by side, each with its place. In the EU, EASA, the EU aviation safety agency, certifies aircraft designs and sets the rules, with the German LBA overseeing much of the work in Germany; the US FAA certifies in the US; the UK CAA has done so in the UK since the UK left EASA; Switzerland takes part in the EASA system, with the Swiss FOCA; and India's DGCA oversees civil aviation in India. Export rules are named the same way: US defence work falls under the US ITAR, and the EU has its own dual-use rules. The process standards most programmes use are international: ARP4754 for developing aircraft systems and ARP4761 for their safety assessment.

One design change, step by step

1. Requirement: a customer, an airline or a test result asks for a change, and its requirements are written and traced.
2. Design and analysis: model the change, analyse loads, stress, fatigue and weight, and record every assumption.
3. Review: independent checkers and specialists review the design and the analysis.
4. Show compliance: agree with the certification team how each requirement is shown, by analysis, test or inspection, and write it up.
5. Release and support: release the drawings under configuration control and support production, suppliers and the first flights.

Much of the effort goes into the parts nobody photographs: the stress report, the trace from requirement to test, and the review that finds the wrong load case before a part is made.

Your CV for an aerospace engineer job

An aerospace engineer's CV first meets software that searches it for the ad's words, then a lead engineer who wants to know which parts or systems you worked on, what you analysed or designed yourself and how it was approved. Give both: the keywords and the evidence.

Use the keywords the ads use

• Write the work as the ads do: "stress analysis", "FEA", "CATIA", "requirements", "certification", "composites". The skills table above shows which keywords the ads use most.
• Name the product and your part of it: a wing rib, an engine bracket, a flight control system, a satellite panel.
• Say what kind of evidence you produced: stress reports, test plans, compliance documents.
• A course or a qualification still under way, such as a degree module or a standard's training, goes on the CV as in progress, with the planned date.

Prove each skill

An aerospace line proves itself with a part or system, the analysis or design, and its approval.

Leave out what export rules or the employer keep confidential: no controlled data, no drawings, no programme details beyond what is public.

How we read our data

• The jobs: the aerospace engineer jobs in our job search (aerospace, aeronautical, aircraft and flight test engineers, and the German titles Luft- und Raumfahrtingenieur, Luftfahrtingenieur and Raumfahrtingenieur), matched by their titles the way the search matches them; mechanical engineers are counted on their own page. Our list is not the whole market, so we give shares and rankings, never counts.
• The skills: every day we read a sample of these ads and count the skills in them with a fixed word list. Only the counts are kept, never the text of an ad.
• Pay: from published salary research, each source named with its date, as a range from entry level to senior. Our ads are not used for it.
• Dates: every figure is worked out again each day and shows the day it was worked out.

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