Flight Test Engineers

[Chicken Leg]

What exactly do they do and what qualifications do they have or need?

[Genghis the Engineer]

An incredibly wide range of jobs because FTEs often tend to be specialists - for example in avionics, performance, handling, engineering systems, weapons systems...

Broadly however, the role of the FTE is to plan, manage, brief, debrief and report flight trials. On the right (or wrong if you are one of those odd people who like aviation but not flying) trials, it also often involves flying on board the aircraft providing aspects of test equipment operation and/or management of the test in conjunction with the Test Pilot(s).

What qualifications is harder to answer - a lot of FTEs do have a fairly classical aero-eng (or similar) degree background then went into flight test relatively early. However, equally a lot have come from a background in the design and development of the aircraft or systems that they are overseeing the testing of.

It is far from universal, but a fair number will also be keen pilots in their own right; to a large extent I think that the people who are fascinated by flying as a hobby also tend to search out careers in it, but also a good understanding of flying is valuable in being able to do the job. Some FTEs do migrate into becoming TPs, although only generally on smaller aircraft types reasonably flown on a "self funded" licence, not on the bigger faster stuff.

G