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
Application Process
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting
Liebherr Group runs a single, unified SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting tenant for the entire group, including the Aerospace and Transportation Systems division. The public career site is hosted at career5.successfactors.eu on the EMEA cluster and uses careerSiteCompanyId=liebherr as its identifier, confirmed live as of this guide's publication. SuccessFactors is SAP's enterprise Talent Management suite and is the dominant ATS across European industrial employers; it handles application intake, resume parsing, candidate workflow, recruiter dashboards, offer generation, and handoff to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for onboarding. The candidate experience is standardized: a single candidate profile is reusable across all group postings, the application form follows a consistent stepped flow (Personal Information, Questions, Attachments, Review), and status updates arrive via templated emails.
- Upload a clean PDF first, then correct the parsed fields by hand; the SuccessFactors parser is competent but not flawless, especially with multilingual CVs and European date formats.
- Fill every field, even optional ones. Recruiters filter candidate pools on fields like highest degree, years of experience, certifications, and languages; leaving them blank excludes you from filtered searches even if your CV contains the information.
- Reuse the candidate profile across applications rather than creating duplicate accounts; SuccessFactors flags duplicates and routes them to recruiter review, which slows down your application.
- Answer the screening questions (knockout questions) literally and completely. Liebherr uses standardized questions for work authorization, language proficiency, willingness to relocate, and clearance eligibility; an evasive or ambiguous answer routes you to manual triage or auto-reject.
- Use the 'Save as Draft' function liberally. SuccessFactors sessions time out after roughly thirty minutes of inactivity and lose unsaved work, which is painful on long European application forms.
- Set up job alerts inside the portal rather than relying on third-party aggregators; the portal reflects postings in real time while aggregators lag by days.
- For internal applicants who have previously done a stage or alternance at Liebherr, reuse the SuccessFactors credentials and reference the internal employee ID where the application asks for referral information; internal referrals are weighted meaningfully in shortlist decisions.
- Expect all correspondence (confirmations, rejections, interview invitations) to come from liebherr.com or successfactors.eu email domains; anything else is a phishing attempt.
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.
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?
Do I need to speak French to work at the Toulouse site?
Do I need to speak German to work at the Lindenberg site?
What is the difference between a stage and an alternance, and which should I pursue?
What is the German equivalent, and how does DHBW fit in?
How cyclical is Liebherr-Aerospace's hiring?
Can a non-EU, non-US citizen get hired at Liebherr-Aerospace?
How long does the hiring process take?
How does compensation compare to Airbus, Safran, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, and Moog?
Is Liebherr-Aerospace part of Liebherr-International AG, and does the family still own it?
What are the MRO and services career paths, and how do they differ from engineering?
Open Positions
Liebherr Aerospace currently has 5 open positions.
Related Resources
Sources
- Liebherr Group - Careers Portal —
- Liebherr SuccessFactors Career Site (SAP SuccessFactors, careerSiteCompanyId=liebherr) —
- Liebherr-Aerospace & Transportation SAS - Division Overview —
- Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse SAS - Site Page —
- Liebherr-Aerospace Lindenberg GmbH - Site Page —
- Liebherr Aerospace Saline, Inc. - US Site —
- Liebherr Group - Facts and Figures (revenue, headcount) —
- SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting - Product Documentation —
- Airbus A350 Program - Liebherr Role (air management, landing gear, flight controls) —
- Boeing 777X Program - Overview (certification context) —
- French Stage and Alternance - Ministere du Travail Overview —
- DHBW - Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg —
- EASA Part 21, Part 145, Part 66 - Regulatory Framework —
- US ITAR and EAR Export Controls - Defense Trade Basics —