Engineer (Formula SAE Track)

About the role

Icarus is a startup focused on reclaiming the Stratosphere as the next frontier for aerospace. Our mission is to build solar-powered aircraft that can fly at 60,000 feet for weeks at a time, offering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this atmospheric layer. This role is ideal for Formula SAE enthusiasts. If you were the team member who got things built, stayed late, solved tough problems, and refused to give up until the car worked, we'd love to hear from you. We're looking for someone with grit, horsepower, humility, technical curiosity, and the drive to become great.

Responsibilities

• Design and fly lightweight, high-reliability structures for stratospheric aircraft
• Own mechanical subsystems from concept to flight
• Perform first-principles sizing, trade studies, and rapid iteration
• Build, test, break, and refine flight hardware
• Support integration, production, and flight operations
• Work closely with avionics, GNC, power, RF, and software teams

Requirements

• Formula SAE experience
• Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, or exceptional student willing to take a break from school to join a startup
• Evidence that you have built real hardware, not just worked on presentations
• High grit, high urgency, high ownership
• Strong mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, or systems instincts
• Willingness to learn anything required to get the aircraft flying
• Comfortable working hands-on in a factory, lab, desert, field environment, or wherever the mission requires
• Able to take feedback, improve quickly, and keep pushing
• No ego about doing dirty work
• Obsessed with building, testing, learning, and getting better

Qualifications

• You owned a subsystem on a Formula SAE car
• You manufactured parts yourself
• You stayed late to debug problems before competition
• You wired harnesses, machined parts, laid composites, tuned systems, ran tests, or fixed failures in the field
• You have CAD, FEA, machining, composites, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience
• You have a story about something breaking and how you fixed it

Skills

• Strong mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, or systems instincts
• Hands-on experience in a factory, lab, desert, field environment, or wherever the mission requires
• Ability to take feedback, improve quickly, and keep pushing
• Obsession with building, testing, learning, and getting better

Benefits

• Meaningful equity
• Top market salary and bonuses
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Factory in El Segundo
• Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
• Small team, massive responsibility
• High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
• Dream desk setup
• Daily lunch
• Unlimited celsius

Pay

US salary range: $120,000 - $220,000 USD. The salary range is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

Schedule

Flexible schedule to accommodate desert operations and other mission requirements.