Computational Fluid Dynamics Engineer

CFD Engineer – Sail Aerodynamics

📍 Location: Hybrid (UK, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands)

💼 Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

🎯 Level: Mid-Level Engineer

Company Overview

North Sails is the global leader in sailmaking, designing and manufacturing sails for premier racing and cruising applications worldwide, including the America’s Cup, the Ocean Race, and Grand Prix racing circuits. Design and production operations are integrated across international hubs.

Program Overview

Sail design presents a complex coupled fluid-structural challenge. A flexible sail deforms under aerodynamic loading, causing its operational flying shape to differ significantly from its manufactured geometry. To evaluate high-dimensional design spaces at speed, machine learning surrogate models are being integrated directly into the design pipeline. The primary objective is developing surrogate models capable of rapidly predicting integrated aerodynamic forces, moments, and surface pressure distributions for user-defined flying shapes and operational conditions.

Position Summary

The CFD Engineer executes high-throughput aerodynamic data generation campaigns to support machine learning surrogate model training. The position encompasses workflow automation within an OpenFOAM-based Virtual Wind Tunnel (VWT), quality assurance protocol implementation, and a comprehensive numerical fidelity study evaluating steady RANS against unsteady RANS (URANS) and scale-resolving methods (DES/LES) in separated flow conditions.

Key Responsibilities

• Plan, execute, and monitor high-volume automated RANS simulation campaigns across diverse geometric and environmental condition spaces.
• Script and automate OpenFOAM case setup, meshing, solver execution, and post-processing workflows using Python.
• Establish automated verification and quality control systems to detect non-converged or physically inconsistent CFD runs prior to dataset integration.
• Design and execute numerical fidelity studies comparing steady RANS, unsteady RANS, and scale-resolving models in separated flow regimes, establishing clear numerical uncertainty estimates.
• Manage compute allocation and job scheduling across internal clusters, academic supercomputing resources, and cloud environments.
• Provide technical support to sail designers regarding CFD case configuration, baseline validation, and diagnostic evaluation.
• Maintain systematic documentation of simulation parameters, mesh resolutions, and data provenance standards.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Substantial practical experience conducting RANS CFD evaluations in external aerodynamics or related computational physics domains with full ownership of delivered results.
• Deep technical proficiency in OpenFOAM, covering mesh generation, solver configuration, boundary condition definition, and convergence diagnosis.
• Applied knowledge of turbulence modeling formulations, including closure behavior and limitations in separated flow regimes.
• Proficiency in Python scripting for simulation pipeline automation and dataset processing.
• Demonstrated application of verification and validation (V&V) methodologies, grid convergence studies, and numerical uncertainty analysis.
• Experience configuring and running jobs on High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments or cloud infrastructure.

Good to Have (Desirable)

• Practical exposure to unsteady RANS (URANS), Detached Eddy Simulation (DES), or Large Eddy Simulation (LES).
• Experience designing methodological modeling studies to quantify numerical fidelity rather than isolated design point evaluations.
• Familiarity with thin cambered membranes, lifting surface aerodynamics, or fluid-structure interaction (FSI).
• Background in marine engineering, sailing aerodynamics, or scientific machine learning applications.

Working Arrangements & Employment Conditions

This position operates on a remote-first model with eligible employment locations in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, or the Netherlands. Periodic travel is required for engineering and design integration reviews. Compensation is aligned with regional market benchmarks in the country of employment.