The NASA Technical Fellows Program recognizes Agency-wide technical excellence and leadership, with Fellows serving within the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC); advising the Office of the Chief Engineer, NASA programs and Mission Directorates. Also serves as a voting member on the NESC Review Board. Fellows perform value-added testing, analysis, and assessments of NASA's high-risk projects to ensure safety and mission success.
The Technical Fellow Non-Destructive Evaluation: Serves as the Agency's authoritative technical resource in Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE), applying advanced engineering theory and operational expertise, frequently leading teams and providing the technical foundation for evaluating and reducing mission risk.
Provides Agency-wide technical leadership and collaboration in NDE, leading independent assessments and partnering with recognized researchers and engineers across NASA centers, academia, national laboratories, industry, and the Department of Defense to conduct and sponsor work that informs NDE mission risk.
Communicates and fosters NDE knowledge, publishing engineering findings through NASA channels, journals, seminars, NESC Academy courses, or domestic/international universities; serve as an invited presenter at conferences and promote participation in engineering academies. Provides senior technical leadership for independent technical reviews, serving as the national/international expert in NDE.
Establishes, leads, and stewards a Technical Discipline Team (TDT) of the Agency's foremost NDE experts, and augmenting by external specialists-to support independent assessments and ensure discipline stewardship across NASA.
Applies advanced NDE methodologies using non damaging interrogating energy-such as sound, heat, X rays, microwaves, optical, and Terahertz radiation-to characterize material properties, detect damage, and assess the integrity of aerospace materials, structures, and systems.
Develops, adapts, and customizes NDE techniques to accommodate complex material types, specialized structural geometries, and unique flight components used across NASA missions, ensuring accurate, reliable, and mission appropriate inspection results.
Provides authoritative technical expertise and leadership across the full spectrum of NDE subdisciplines, including dye penetrant, magnetic particle, ultrasonic, acoustic emission, radiographic, thermographic, optical, and electromagnetic methods, as applied to metallic and composite aerospace structures.
Leads Agency-wide NDE discipline stewardship activities, including technical workshops, knowledge-sharing forums, identification and cataloging of critical skills and facilities, assessment of emerging technical challenges, and periodic reporting of discipline health, capability, and risk to Agency leadership.
This position has a positive education requirement. To be eligible, you must clearly state in your resume the following: degree, major and/or minor, and college/university. A college or university degree generally must be from an accredited (or pre-accredited) college or university recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. For a list of schools which meet these criteria, please refer to Department of Education Accreditation page.
An official transcript will be required if you are selected. A bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with major study in engineering, physical science, mathematics, life sciences, computer science, or other field of science.
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR FOREIGN EDUCATION: If you are using education completed in foreign colleges or universities to meet the qualification requirements, you must show that the education credentials have been evaluated by a private organization that specializes in interpretation of foreign education programs. These education credentials must be deemed equivalent to that gained in an accredited U.S. education program; or full credit has been given for the courses at a U.S.
accredited college or university. For further information, click here.
Agency-Executive-Staffing@mail.nasa.gov
This position is with Langley Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The posted pay range is $151661 – $217332/yr.
This position requires a Secret security clearance.
Applications close on 2026-10-13.
This position is open under the 'Fed Internal Search' hiring path.
Source: USAJOBS.gov — U.S. Federal Government
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