Senior Manager, Airworthiness and Certification

About Merlin: Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation. About You: This role pairs deep, personal expertise in civil certification with the people leadership needed to manage two additional, interdependent certification disciplines: military airworthiness and cyber security certification. You are a proven certification leader with extensive, hands-on experience managing complex civil certification programs through FAA Part 23 and Part 25, EASA CS-23 and CS-25, and foreign validations. You also bring working experience in military airworthiness through MIL-HDBK-516C and MIL-STD-882E compliance. You understand the process rigor and collaborative relationships required to achieve airworthiness approvals across civil and military domains, and how airborne cyber security assurance requirements must be part of the initial design concepts on every new program. You lead by building relationships within the organization and externally with regulators, sponsoring offices, and your own team of certification leads, and you know how to translate emerging and often ambiguous guidance into a defensible, schedule-compatible certification strategy. Merlin Labs builds autonomous aviation systems for civil and defense customers, and the engineering organization behind that work needs a leader who is personally expert in civil certification and who can manage the work of the military airworthiness lead and Cyber Certification Lead. You will own civil certification (FAA Part 23 and Part 25) directly, while leading the military airworthiness lead and cyber certification lead and their teams, reporting to the VP of Airworthiness & certification. If you want to grow and lead the certification and airworthiness teams that enable Merlin to field robust, certifiable autonomous systems to civil and defense customers on a demanding schedule, this is the role for you. Responsibilities: • Support current New Zealand CAANZ certification activities for the U.S. based aspects and lead Merlin's civil certification strategy with the FAA and other foreign authorities, serving as primary technical authority and primary liaison with regulatory authorities for U.S. certifications. • Manage all aspects of new civil certification projects: Core process standardization, A&C initial assessments, compliance strategies and A & C plans, issue papers and risk assessments, and guide the Merlin team to final compliance. • Lead and grow the Military Airworthiness and Cyber Certification teams, setting priorities, establishing and standardizing core processes, mentoring, and reviewing technical work while the team executes day-to-day military airworthiness and cyber certification activities. • Oversee the military airworthiness certification strategy for Merlin's defense programs through the Military Airworthiness Lead, serving as an escalation point to mitigate technical, resource, and capability risks. • Oversee closure of Military Certification Review Items (MCRIs), Issue Papers, and related airworthiness documentation through the Military Airworthiness Lead, ensuring compliance with MIL-HDBK-516C, MIL-STD-882E, applicable DEF STANs, and JSSG guidance. • Oversee the cyber security certification strategy across civil and military programs through the Cyber Certification Lead, driving integration of airborne cyber security assurance activities with existing safety and development assurance processes and serve as an escalation point to mitigate technical, resource, capability risks. • Partner with the process assurance manager and engineering discipline leads to integrate civil certification, military airworthiness, and cyber security certification processes with Merlin's broader process assurance and configuration management framework. • Drive continuous improvement of civil certification, military airworthiness, and cyber security certification processes based on audit findings, program lessons learned, and evolving regulatory and DoD guidance. • Report to the VP of Airworthiness & certification on program health for civil certification and military airworthiness projects as well ...