Senior Additive Manufacturing Engineer
Manufacturing - Villeneuve, CH
The position
- Crew
- Manufacturing
- Location
- Villeneuve, CH
- Type of contract
- Full-time
Your role
PAVE Space is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving over 4-tonne payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours. The engine has parts no one can mill; thrust chambers with internal cooling channels, complex injectors, regen geometry that only exists because additive manufacturing makes it possible. None of those parts fly without the person we hire into this seat.
PAVE Space is bringing additive manufacturing in-house for propulsion. The workshop is being built, and the entire AM chain has to be specified, procured, and qualified: printer, post-processing, and inspection. It must be producing flight parts before the engine campaign hits stride. You'll define and stand up that chain, on a timeline measured in weeks, not quarters.
You will own
Selection and procurement of the metal AM platform(s) for propulsion hardware; printer, post-processing equipment, inspection chain
Process qualification: parameter development, witness coupon strategy, material characterisation for combustion environments
The full build chain: build orientation, support strategy, slicing, machine operation
Post-processing: HIP, heat treatment, stock removal machining, surface finish, NDT
Material and supply-chain strategy for propulsion AM hardware
The qualification dossier that lets a printed part go into a fired engine and stands up to a customer's or auditor's review
What we are looking for
7+ years of metal AM engineering, with at least one programme qualifying parts for high-temperature or pressurised flight service
Deep hands-on with LPBF (DMLM, SLM, or equivalent), including parameter development from scratch
Material expertise relevant to combustion and regenerative cooling environments
Experience qualifying AM parts to ECSS, NASA, or equivalent standards
Post-processing competence; HIP, heat treatment, support removal, surface finishing, not just printing
Comfortable specifying and commissioning the full chain, not operating an inherited one
Reads engineering drawings fluently, including GD&T applied to additive
English, fluently
Nice to have: French; rocket engine or turbopump part qualification experience; experience standing up an AM capability in-house at a series-production aerospace company.
You will fit if
You'd rather develop the parameter set than tune someone else's recipe.
You want to be in front of the printer when the first build comes off, not waiting for a service bureau's report.
You see the chain (printer, HIP, machining, NDT) as one product, and you take it personally when any link is the weak one.
You're comfortable challenging a designer when the geometry doesn't print well, and rewriting the build when the design has to win.
You take pride in printed parts that pass first time on the test stand and earn the right to fly, and you know what the discipline behind that costs.
The job is fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD), with our test site in Chavalon twenty minutes away. The AM function is being built from scratch; you'll be specifying the machines, not inheriting them. You'll report to the Workshop Lead and work closely with the propulsion team on every part. This is hard and early. If you want an established AM capability with a qualified material library on the shelf, this is the wrong seat. If you want to build that library and qualify the machines that print the engine of the most ambitious space programme in Switzerland, it's the right one.
We are building to ship, grounded on real hardware, real funding, real milestones. Apply to contribute, surrounded by people as sharp as you are. And if this isn't you but you know that person, send them our way.