How to Apply to Liebherr Aerospace

14 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 5 open positions

Key Takeaways

  • SuccessFactors is the single ATS across the Liebherr Group, hosted at career5.successfactors.eu with company identifier liebherr, with a unified candidate profile reusable across every division and country.
  • Toulouse is the aerospace headquarters and integration center; Lindenberg is the manufacturing and systems heart; Saline is the North American landing gear center; Singapore and Shanghai are services. Choose the site whose language and industrial profile matches you.
  • Family ownership drives long-term stability but also conservative culture; candidates who signal tenure, depth, and fit over hop-optimization are favored.
  • Stage, alternance, Ausbildung, and DHBW programs are the dominant entry channels for early-career candidates and convert to permanent contracts at high rates.
  • Language alignment (French C1+ for Toulouse, German C1+ for Lindenberg, English C1+ elsewhere) is more decisive than most candidates expect.
  • Aerospace supply-chain cyclicality is real; hiring tracks Airbus and Boeing delivery ramps (A350 ramp, 777X certification delays) and defense-segment growth, with periods of aggressive hiring interleaved with periods of holding steady.
  • ITAR, EAR, and national defense-clearance restrictions apply to a subset of roles and are legal rather than cultural constraints; check eligibility before investing time in an application.
  • Multi-round interviews are the norm, with three to four rounds over four to sixteen weeks depending on seniority and clearance requirements.

About Liebherr Aerospace

Liebherr-Aerospace & Transportation SAS is the aerospace division of Liebherr Group, a Swiss-family-owned industrial conglomerate founded in 1949 by Hans Liebherr in Kirchdorf an der Iller, Germany. The group as a whole operates 150+ companies across construction machinery, mining, refrigeration, maritime cranes, aerospace, and components, employing roughly 50,000 people globally and generating in the neighborhood of 14 billion euros in annual revenue. The aerospace division sits within that broader structure but operates with its own management, customers, and industrial footprint, with approximately 6,000 employees distributed across four primary sites and a worldwide service network. The division's headquarters for Aerospace & Transportation SAS is in Toulouse, France, immediately adjacent to Aeroport Toulouse-Blagnac and within arm's reach of the Airbus final assembly lines. Toulouse is the integration and sales center for the division and the natural gravitational point for anyone pursuing a career in European aerospace. Lindenberg im Allgau, a town of under twelve thousand people in Bavaria, Germany, is the original aerospace manufacturing hub where Liebherr designs and builds air management systems, flight control systems, and actuation. Saline, Michigan, outside Ann Arbor, is the North American landing gear and engineering center, established to support Boeing, Bombardier, and Embraer programs with local content. Singapore and Shanghai round out the footprint as services, MRO, and spares centers supporting the Asia-Pacific fleet. The division's product portfolio is concentrated in four domains: air management systems (the environmental control, bleed air, cabin pressurization, and thermal management that keeps an airframe breathable and survivable at altitude), flight control and actuation (primary and secondary flight controls, high-lift systems, hydraulics), landing gear (nose and main gear for commercial, regional, business, and military aircraft), and electronics (flight control electronics, health monitoring). Liebherr-Aerospace is on the shipset of the Airbus A350, A330, A320 family, A220, Embraer E-Jet E2 family, Bombardier Global 7500, Dassault Falcon family, and several military and rotorcraft platforms, and it is a tier-one supplier to Boeing on the 777X landing gear and other programs. That customer list tells you nearly everything you need to know about the hiring posture: programs run on decade-scale timelines, production rates are set by Airbus and Boeing ramp plans, and hiring is strongly correlated with OEM delivery schedules. Culturally, the company is an unusual hybrid. It is a Swiss-registered group with German engineering DNA, a French aerospace headquarters, and a landing gear center in the American Midwest. Leadership language in Toulouse is predominantly French, in Lindenberg predominantly German, with English as the lingua franca across sites and for most engineering roles. Family ownership means the company reinvests aggressively, takes long-term bets on capital equipment and R&D, and does not face the quarterly earnings pressure of a publicly-listed competitor, which translates into stable employment even through aerospace cycles, but also into conservative decision-making, slower management turnover, and a strong expectation that employees settle in for long careers rather than optimize for the next hop.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Start at the global careers portal at liebherr

    Start at the global careers portal at liebherr.com/en-int/careers/careers-5370600, which is the Liebherr Group landing page. From there, filter for the Aerospace and Transportation Systems division and, optionally, for a specific site (Toulouse, Lindenberg, Saline, Singapore, Shanghai, or the smaller Campsas and Friedrichshafen locations). All postings route to the group's SAP SuccessFactors career site, hosted at career5.successfactors.eu with the company identifier liebherr, which is the single ATS of record across every division and every country. There is no separate aerospace-only portal.

  2. 2
    Read the job family and location carefully before applying

    Read the job family and location carefully before applying. A role posted in Toulouse will typically require conversational French and will often expect working French for internal meetings and documentation; a role posted in Lindenberg or Friedrichshafen will usually be advertised bilingually but will operate in German day-to-day; Saline roles operate in English with ITAR and EAR export-control restrictions; Singapore and Shanghai roles are in English with local-language advantages. Applying to the wrong site for your language profile is the single most common self-inflicted rejection.

  3. 3
    Create a SuccessFactors candidate profile the first time you apply

    Create a SuccessFactors candidate profile the first time you apply. You will be asked to either upload a resume for parsing or build the profile manually field-by-field. For aerospace roles, always upload a clean, ATS-friendly PDF and then correct the parsed fields by hand, paying particular attention to employer names, date ranges, degree titles, and any aerospace certifications or clearances. The parser is SAP's standard SuccessFactors implementation and handles European date formats, bilingual CVs, and standard headings reliably, but it mishandles multi-column layouts, text-in-images, and unusual section titles.

  4. 4
    Submit a targeted cover letter

    Submit a targeted cover letter. In France, a lettre de motivation is expected for nearly every substantive role and is often read before the CV; in Germany, an Anschreiben is similarly expected and is often the first filter a recruiter applies. A generic English cover letter is acceptable for international engineering roles but weak for country-specific postings. Write in the language of the posting whenever possible; if your target language is not strong enough to write a cover letter, that is a signal that the role is not yet a fit.

  5. 5
    For students and early-career candidates, apply to the dedicated stage and alter

    For students and early-career candidates, apply to the dedicated stage and alternance postings in France (stages de fin d'etudes for Master's-level interns, contrats d'apprentissage and contrats de professionnalisation for alternance students) and to Ausbildung and DHBW (Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg) dual-study programs in Germany. These are the dominant entry channels at both Toulouse and Lindenberg and are funneled to their own campus recruiters. A strong stage or Ausbildung at Liebherr converts to a permanent CDI or unbefristeter Vertrag at a significantly higher rate than external junior hires.

  6. 6
    Expect an acknowledgement email within 24 to 72 hours and a recruiter screen wit

    Expect an acknowledgement email within 24 to 72 hours and a recruiter screen within two to four weeks for engineering roles; production and operations roles move faster, with phone screens sometimes within days. Defense-adjacent roles (flight control electronics for military platforms, landing gear for fighter or rotorcraft applications) take longer because of preliminary nationality and clearance checks done before HR even contacts you.

  7. 7
    Prepare for multi-round interviews

    Prepare for multi-round interviews. A typical engineering loop is a recruiter phone screen, a technical interview with a manager or lead engineer, a second technical with a cross-functional panel (systems, stress, design, or operations depending on the role), and a final conversation with the department head or a site general manager. Expect the full process to take four to eight weeks for commercial roles and eight to sixteen weeks for defense-adjacent or senior roles.

  8. 8
    Receive and negotiate the offer

    Receive and negotiate the offer. French CDI contracts will specify gross annual salary, variable pay (if any), Tickets Restaurant or equivalent meal subsidy, mutuelle (private health top-up), prevoyance, intressement, participation, and often a 13th-month or equivalent. German contracts will specify Bruttojahresgehalt, Urlaubsgeld, Weihnachtsgeld where applicable, and tarifvertrag or company-agreement classification. US offers at Saline include standard 401(k), medical, dental, vision, and export-control attestations. Negotiation culture is more constrained than at US-headquartered tech firms; Liebherr is known for fair but not aggressive offers, and the largest lever in negotiation is typically the job grade rather than a within-grade premium.

  9. 9
    Complete onboarding and clearance

    Complete onboarding and clearance. Defense-adjacent roles require national clearance (Habilitation Defense in France, Sicherheitsuberpruefung Stufe 1-3 in Germany, US Secret or Export-Controlled Person designation at Saline depending on the program). Clearance processing can add weeks or months to the start date and is the single largest source of onboarding delay.


Resume Tips for Liebherr Aerospace

recommended

Use a single-column, parser-friendly layout

Use a single-column, parser-friendly layout. SuccessFactors parses PDF and DOCX reliably when the structure is linear. Avoid text boxes, tables for layout, icons, and multi-column designs; they are common in French and German CV templates but routinely corrupt the parsed profile and force manual re-entry.

recommended

Name aerospace programs explicitly

Name aerospace programs explicitly. A resume that says 'landing gear stress analysis' is generic; a resume that says 'A350-900 main landing gear side-stay stress analysis under limit and ultimate load per CS-25.561' is a signal to the hiring manager that you understand the regulatory and structural context. Use program names (A350, A320neo, A220, E2, Global 7500, 777X, Falcon 10X) and certification basis (CS-25, FAR Part 25, Part 23, CS-27, CS-29) precisely.

recommended

State certifications clearly

State certifications clearly. AS9100, Part 21 (DOA/POA), Part 145, EN 9100, EASA Part-66 licenses, Six Sigma belts, PMP, and language certifications (DELF/DALF, Goethe, TOEIC, IELTS) all have direct ATS resonance. List them in a distinct Certifications section with dates of issue and renewal where applicable.

recommended

Use both English and local-language terms for core skills where the posting is b

Use both English and local-language terms for core skills where the posting is bilingual. A French-language posting for a stress engineer will parse 'calculs statiques non-lineaires' and 'methodes aux elements finis' alongside 'non-linear static analysis' and 'finite element method', and having both increases your keyword density without keyword stuffing.

recommended

Quantify scope in aerospace units

Quantify scope in aerospace units. Shipset count delivered, FAI (First Article Inspection) reports signed, NCRs (Non-Conformance Reports) closed, MRB (Material Review Board) dispositions authored, weight saved in grams or kilograms, cycle-time reduced in hours or days, and defects per million opportunities are all units that aerospace hiring managers read fluently.

recommended

Include language proficiency with a European framework level (A1 through C2) rat

Include language proficiency with a European framework level (A1 through C2) rather than vague self-ratings. 'French C1, German B2, English C2' is readable to every European recruiter; 'fluent' is not.

recommended

For French applicants, a photograph at the top of the CV is still common and not

For French applicants, a photograph at the top of the CV is still common and not illegal; at Liebherr Toulouse it is neutral rather than required. For German applicants, the Bewerbungsfoto in the top-right is expected for traditional tabular CVs; for modern one-page English CVs it is optional. For US applicants, no photo, ever.

recommended

List your nationality or work authorization status for roles in jurisdictions wh

List your nationality or work authorization status for roles in jurisdictions where it is material. EU citizenship or a valid work permit is a hard filter for most European Liebherr roles; US citizenship or permanent residency is frequently required for Saline defense-adjacent roles because of ITAR and EAR. State it plainly; do not force the recruiter to guess.

recommended

Maintain a version-controlled master CV with every program, every tool, every pa

Maintain a version-controlled master CV with every program, every tool, every part number you have worked on, and then prune ruthlessly to one to two pages per application. The master CV is the system of record; the application CV is the artifact. Aerospace careers are long, and an accurate master CV pays dividends ten years later when you are asked to recall the specific fatigue-test campaign you supported in 2018.



Interview Culture

Interviews at Liebherr-Aerospace are disciplined, multi-round, and culturally bilingual in a way that reflects the company's Franco-German-American tri-national engineering base.

Expect formality. Dress business or business-smart for every round, including first-round video calls; aerospace Europe is not a hoodie culture. Be on time to the minute; five minutes late without warning is read as a character signal, not a scheduling mishap. Address interviewers by title and last name until invited to use first names; in France, Monsieur or Madame with the family name is the safe default; in Germany, Herr or Frau with the family name and, where applicable, academic title (Dr., Prof. Dr.) is expected. The interview structure is predictable. Round one is typically a recruiter phone or video screen, thirty to forty-five minutes, focused on motivation, language verification, compensation expectations, and logistical fit (location, start date, visa or clearance status). Round two is a technical interview with the hiring manager or a lead engineer, sixty to ninety minutes, covering your resume in detail and specific technical questions calibrated to the posting; expect to whiteboard or work through a design or analysis problem live. Round three is commonly a panel or cross-functional set of shorter conversations with peers and adjacent disciplines (a stress engineer will meet systems, design, and test; a program manager will meet engineering, quality, and supply chain), focused on collaboration style, trade-off judgment, and fit with the team. A final round with the department head, site director, or for senior roles a division executive is common and is decisive; this round tests strategic awareness and long-term fit rather than narrow technical depth. French interviewers in Toulouse favor structured, argumentative responses that reflect the Grandes Ecoles tradition of rigorous exposition: state the problem, lay out the possibilities, defend a choice with reasoning, acknowledge trade-offs. Answers that are too short or too informal read as unprepared; answers that are too long or too performative read as grandiose. Aim for precise, well-structured answers of sixty to ninety seconds for most behavioral questions and two to four minutes for technical deep-dives, with clear signposting. German interviewers in Lindenberg and Friedrichshafen favor direct, factual, evidence-based answers and are comfortable with silence while you think; do not rush to fill pauses. Precision matters more than polish. Cite specific numbers, specific tools, specific standards. If you do not know something, say so and explain how you would find out; bluffing is expensive. American interviewers at Saline are more informal and conversational but equally rigorous on the technical substance and, uniquely, on export-control and ITAR awareness for defense-adjacent roles. Expect explicit questions about your citizenship, prior clearances, and understanding of export-control restrictions on technical data. Across all sites, interviewers will probe motivation for Liebherr specifically, not just for aerospace. Why Liebherr, not Airbus, not Safran, not Collins, not Honeywell, not Moog? A credible answer references the family-ownership stability, the integrated-systems-supplier positioning, a specific program or product line that attracts you, or a specific engineering culture attribute you have researched or experienced. Generic enthusiasm reads as weak. Compensation conversations happen earlier in Europe than in the US; expect the recruiter in round one to ask directly about your current and target salary. Provide a range and anchor it to publicly-available benchmarks for the site and job family. Offer negotiations are polite and bounded; large last-minute counters are culturally discordant and rarely successful.

What Liebherr Aerospace Looks For

  • Demonstrated aerospace domain fluency. Program names, certification bases, tool chains (CATIA, NX, PATRAN, NASTRAN, ANSYS, MATLAB/Simulink, DOORS, SAP), and industry standards (AS9100, EN 9100, Part 21, Part 145, DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A) should feel native rather than learned-for-the-interview.
  • Long-term commitment. Liebherr is a family-owned company that invests in its people and expects stability in return. Candidates with three or more short tenures in a row without a strong narrative rationale will be viewed skeptically; candidates who have grown inside two or three employers over ten years will be viewed favorably.
  • Language alignment with the site. French C1+ for substantive Toulouse roles, German C1+ for substantive Lindenberg and Friedrichshafen roles, English C1+ for Saline and Singapore, with the other group languages as strong positive signals.
  • Systems thinking. Liebherr-Aerospace builds integrated systems (a landing gear is a mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and software system delivered with certification data, training, and service); candidates who can reason across disciplines and across the product lifecycle (concept, design, test, certification, production, service) are weighted heavily.
  • Regulatory literacy. EASA, FAA, and where relevant TCCA, ANAC, and CAAC frameworks; Part 21 (DOA/POA), Part 145 (maintenance), Part 66 (licensed engineers); certification basis for commercial (CS-25, FAR Part 25), regional and business aviation (CS-23, FAR Part 23), and rotorcraft (CS-27, CS-29).
  • Quality and safety culture. In aerospace, a cavalier attitude toward process, documentation, or non-conformances is disqualifying. Candidates who speak fluently about FAI, PPAP equivalents, MRB, root-cause analysis (8D, Ishikawa, 5-Why), and just-culture reporting are signaling fit.
  • Willingness to relocate and travel. Aerospace careers at Liebherr frequently involve rotations across sites (a Toulouse stress engineer may spend months at Lindenberg during integration, or vice versa) and travel to customer sites (Toulouse, Hamburg, Seattle, Sao Jose dos Campos, Montreal, Wichita).
  • Security-clearance eligibility for defense-adjacent roles. Nationality is a real filter on some roles because of ITAR, EAR, and national defense-clearance restrictions; this is not a preference but a legal requirement, and candidates who cannot meet it for a given role are ineligible regardless of technical strength.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Liebherr-Aerospace use, and is it separate from the rest of the Liebherr Group?
Liebherr uses SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting as a single group-wide tenant. Aerospace and Transportation Systems shares that tenant with construction, mining, maritime, refrigeration, and every other Liebherr division. The career site lives at career5.successfactors.eu with the company identifier liebherr, and a single candidate profile is reusable across every division and every country. There is no aerospace-only portal.
Do I need to speak French to work at the Toulouse site?
For most substantive engineering, program management, quality, procurement, operations, HR, finance, and leadership roles at Toulouse, yes, working French (roughly B2 to C1 on the European framework) is a realistic expectation, and C1 or above is the norm for internal-facing roles. A narrow band of international engineering roles operates primarily in English, but even those candidates tend to acquire working French within a year because so much of the ecosystem (customers at Airbus, suppliers, institutions) operates in French.
Do I need to speak German to work at the Lindenberg site?
Yes, for almost all roles. Lindenberg is a small Bavarian town where the working language, day-to-day culture, and social life all operate in German. Senior engineering and program roles can sometimes be done in English for the first year while the candidate ramps up German, but applying with zero German is a significant disadvantage. The bar at Friedrichshafen is similar.
What is the difference between a stage and an alternance, and which should I pursue?
A stage is a fixed-term internship, typically four to six months, done during or at the end of a study program; a stage de fin d'etudes is a six-month end-of-studies stage that often leads to a permanent offer. An alternance is a work-study contract, either an apprenticeship (contrat d'apprentissage, typically one to three years, for students still in formal study) or a professionalization contract (contrat de professionnalisation). Alternance is deeper, longer, better-paid, and converts to permanent roles at a meaningfully higher rate than stage. If you have a choice, alternance is the stronger path.
What is the German equivalent, and how does DHBW fit in?
Ausbildung is the German dual-training system for vocational and technical roles, typically three years combining paid work at Liebherr with vocational school. DHBW is the Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg, a cooperative university program that alternates semesters of academic study with semesters of paid work at a partner company, producing a Bachelor's degree with industrial experience already embedded. Both are high-conversion paths to permanent employment at Lindenberg and Friedrichshafen.
How cyclical is Liebherr-Aerospace's hiring?
Very. Aerospace supply-chain hiring tracks OEM delivery ramps and certification milestones. The A350 ramp, the A320neo ramp, the A220 ramp, and the E-Jet E2 ramp all drive hiring waves at Toulouse and Lindenberg; the 777X certification timeline drives hiring at Saline. Conversely, OEM rate cuts, program delays, and macro shocks (the 2020 pandemic is the sharpest recent example) drive hiring freezes. Family ownership cushions the troughs (Liebherr is known for holding onto people through downturns) but does not eliminate them.
Can a non-EU, non-US citizen get hired at Liebherr-Aerospace?
Yes, for commercial roles at Toulouse, Lindenberg, Saline, Singapore, and Shanghai, though you will need valid work authorization for the relevant country. Liebherr does sponsor work permits for specialist roles where the local labor market is tight, but it is not a default; senior or scarce-skill candidates have the strongest case. Defense-adjacent roles that require ITAR compliance, a French Habilitation Defense, or a German Sicherheitsuberpruefung are closed to candidates who cannot meet the citizenship or clearance criteria, and this is a legal constraint rather than a preference.
How long does the hiring process take?
Commercial engineering roles typically move from application to offer in four to eight weeks. Senior roles and roles requiring security clearance take eight to sixteen weeks, sometimes longer when clearance processing is involved. Production and operations roles can move faster, sometimes within two to three weeks for urgent requisitions.
How does compensation compare to Airbus, Safran, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, and Moog?
Liebherr-Aerospace pays competitively within the European aerospace supply-chain band but is not typically the highest bidder in any given market. Toulouse base salaries for mid-level engineers are broadly comparable to other tier-one suppliers and slightly below Airbus itself. Lindenberg compensation is in line with regional German aerospace norms and above the Bavarian industrial average. Saline is at or slightly below Detroit-area aerospace and automotive benchmarks. The compensating factors are stability (the family-ownership argument), benefits (strong European social coverage, defined-benefit pension participation at some sites), and technical depth (working on integrated systems across the full lifecycle).
Is Liebherr-Aerospace part of Liebherr-International AG, and does the family still own it?
Yes. The Liebherr Group is held by Liebherr-International AG, a Swiss company owned by the descendants of founder Hans Liebherr. The company has remained family-owned since its founding in 1949 and has repeatedly stated its intention to remain so. That ownership structure is a significant part of the employment value proposition and is visible in long-horizon investment decisions, conservative capital structure, and stable senior leadership.
What are the MRO and services career paths, and how do they differ from engineering?
Liebherr-Aerospace operates a global MRO and services network supporting installed bases on Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, Dassault, and military platforms. Service-center careers are centered in Toulouse, Saline, Singapore, Shanghai, and a handful of other nodes. They are distinct from design-and-development engineering: a service engineer works on AOG (Aircraft on Ground) response, repair development, in-service reliability, fleet-management data, and customer-support engineering. The compensation band is comparable to design engineering at equivalent seniority, and the work is more customer-facing, more international, and more operationally rhythmic.

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Sources

  1. Liebherr Group - Careers Portal
  2. Liebherr SuccessFactors Career Site (SAP SuccessFactors, careerSiteCompanyId=liebherr)
  3. Liebherr-Aerospace & Transportation SAS - Division Overview
  4. Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse SAS - Site Page
  5. Liebherr-Aerospace Lindenberg GmbH - Site Page
  6. Liebherr Aerospace Saline, Inc. - US Site
  7. Liebherr Group - Facts and Figures (revenue, headcount)
  8. SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting - Product Documentation
  9. Airbus A350 Program - Liebherr Role (air management, landing gear, flight controls)
  10. Boeing 777X Program - Overview (certification context)
  11. French Stage and Alternance - Ministere du Travail Overview
  12. DHBW - Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg
  13. EASA Part 21, Part 145, Part 66 - Regulatory Framework
  14. US ITAR and EAR Export Controls - Defense Trade Basics