Teaching and Research Fellow in Aircraft Structural Design

Full time starting salary £38,655 per annum with potential progression to £53,108 per annum

Location: Cranfield, Bedfordshire

We have an exciting opportunity for a talented and ambitious individual with industry or academic experience to join our Aircraft Structures team, conducting teaching and research into novel aircraft configurations ranging from zero emissions hydrogen propulsion through to supersonic transport and eVTOL.

About the Role

We are seeking a talented and ambitious individual to join our team. Working with senior members of the team, the position will be mainly responsible for the development and delivery of high-quality teaching at postgraduate level in various topics related to aircraft structures analysis and design, for academic course management, for postgraduate student research and design project supervision, as well as for engaging with the delivery of industrially sponsored projects.

About You

You will be passionate about aerospace and the value of your specialist topic within this field. The impacts of the aerospace industry and air travel will be important to you, and driving progress towards zero-emissions aviation will be a personal priority. Your ideal working environment will be collaborative and open to learning and experience, with satisfaction gained from supporting others to grow their knowledge and skills through our teaching activities. Professionally, you will be curious and creative, seeking new solutions and applying thinking from outside the traditional aerospace sector. You may be an academic seeking a more postgraduate teaching-focused opportunity, or an industry professional looking for new challenges and a refreshing professional environment.

This opportunity is ideally suited, but not limited to, experienced industrial airframe design and analysis engineers wishing to pursue a career in academia. To be considered, you should have significant aeronautical structural analysis and design skills, ideally gained in an industrial setting.

Your knowledge should span any combination of the following subjects: airworthiness requirements knowledge and application; metallic and/or composite airframe structures analysis and design; fatigue and damage tolerance; computer-aided design (3DEXPERIENCE, CATIA); finite element analysis (ABAQUS, NASTRAN/PATRAN/other); structural stability; aeroelasticity; or structural dynamics. Individuals with an industrial or academic background, having spent significant time in a relevant airframe design and analysis role, will be considered.

About Us

As a specialist postgraduate university, Cranfield’s world-class expertise, large-scale facilities and unrivalled industry partnerships are creating leaders in technology and management globally.

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences (FEAS) is a leading provider ofpostgraduate level engineering education, research and technology support to individuals andorganisations.As part of the faculty, the aerospace theme translates specialist research in aircraft design, propulsion, aerodynamics and autonomous systems into practical aerospace solutions through strong industry partnerships. 

Our Values and Commitments

Our shared, stated values help to define who we are and underpin everything we do: Ambition; Impact; Respect; and Community.

Working Arrangements

Collaborating and connecting are integral to so much of what we do. Our Working Arrangements Framework provides many staff with the opportunity to flexibly combine on-site and remote working, where job roles allow, balancing the needs of our community of staff, students, clients and partners.

How to apply                                    

For an informal discussion, please contact Dr Jafar Jamshidi on j.jamshidi@cranfield.ac.uk, or Professor Craig Lawson on c.p.lawson@cranfield.ac.uk

For further details contact us on peoplerecruitment@cranfield.ac.uk, quoting 5412.

Closing date: 8 November 2026

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