Mechanical Engineer - Airframes & Mechanisms

About the role

You will own mechanical architecture for new airframes and vehicle configurations, from clean-sheet layout and first-principles trades through CAD, prototyping, bench test, flight test, and iteration. You will work across the aerodynamics, rotorcraft, GNC, perception, electrical, and manufacturing teams, but the mechanical architecture, airframe structures, mechanisms, and packaging trades are yours to drive.

You will focus on problems in all of the following areas:

• Airframe & Mechanical Architecture: Own mechanical architecture for new airframes and vehicle configurations, from clean-sheet layout and first-principles trades through CAD, prototyping, bench test, flight test, and iteration.
• Mechanisms Design: Design compact, rugged airframe structures and mechanisms, including linkages, hinges, latches, retention features, printed flexures, and deployables, that survive real handling, transport, vibration, launch, and flight loads.
• Subsystem Packaging: Package motors, propellers, batteries, avionics, sensors, wiring, compute, and thermal paths under aggressive size, weight, and performance constraints.
• Structural Analysis & Failure Modes: Perform FEA, hand calculations, load-path development, tolerance stackups, and failure-mode analysis to ensure hardware survives real-world loads.
• CAD, Fixtures & Test Articles: Produce high-quality CAD, drawings, mechanisms, fixtures, and test articles that can be rapidly manufactured, assembled, inspected, and iterated.
• Manufacturable Hardware Design: Translate mechanical and performance targets into manufacturable hardware, accounting for materials, fabrication methods, assembly sequence, and scale-up.
• Rapid Prototyping & Test: Prototype quickly, test aggressively, break hardware, diagnose failures, and turn real data into the next design revision.
• Subsystem Integration: Integrate subsystems from the aerodynamics, rotorcraft, GNC, perception, electrical, and manufacturing teams into robust, serviceable vehicles.

Basic Qualifications

• Complex Mechanical System Ownership: You have personally brought a complex mechanical system from concept through design, CAD, prototyping, test, failure analysis, and real-world validation. This is non-negotiable.
• First-Principles Execution: You are an incredibly first-principles engineer who moves fast: you drive rapidly from trade study to design, build, test, and validation, simplify problems to the few constraints that actually matter, and upgrade your first-principles models as the system becomes better understood.
• Experience: 6+ years of professional or equivalent hands-on experience in mechanical, mechanism, airframe, robotics, or aerospace hardware design, including serious hobbyist and personal-build experience, which we weight heavily.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, or a related engineering discipline, or equivalent demonstrated ability.
• Mechanisms: Strong experience designing mechanisms, linkages, joints, hinges, latches, flexures, and compact moving assemblies under real-world constraints.
• CAD: Strong proficiency in 3D CAD for complex mechanical assemblies, including Fusion 360, Siemens NX, CATIA, Onshape, SolidWorks, or similar tools.
• FEA & Structural Analysis: Strong proficiency in FEA and first-principles structural analysis, including load paths, stress, vibration, shock, stiffness, buckling, fatigue, and failure modes, using Ansys, Abaqus, Nastran, Fusion Simulation, or similar tools.
• Design for Fabrication & Scale: Experience designing hardware for rapid fabrication and eventual scale, including additive manufacturing, CNC machining, sheet metal, carbon fiber and fiberglass composites, thermoplastics including ASA and ABS, fasteners, and assembly processes.
• Hands-On Fabrication: Extensive hands-on fabrication experience, including machining, 3D printing, carbon fiber and fiberglass composites, thermoplastics including ASA and ABS, hand tools, mechanical assembly, and field repair.
• Flexures & Compliant Mechanisms: Experience designing flexures and compliant mechanisms, including flexures printed on FDM and SLA machines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Education: Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, or a related engineering discipline.
• Small Air Vehicle Design: Multirotor, fixed-wing, missile, loitering munition, racing drone, or other small air vehicle mechanical design experience.
• Compact Mechanical Systems: Experience designing compact, lightweight, deployable, or highly packaged mechanical systems for aerospace, robotics, or defense.
• Racing Drone & Multirotor Experience: Racing-drone or multirotor design, build, tuning, and crash-repair experience.
• Robotics & Electromechanical Hardware: Experience building robots, autonomous systems, end-effectors, or rugged electromechanical hardware.
• Rapid Prototyping: Rapid-prototyping fluency across additive and subtractive methods and their material tradeoffs, including FDM, SLA, CNC, and laser cutting.
• Composite Structures: Carbon fiber and fiberglass composite structures, bonded assemblies, and lightweight, high-stiffness mechanical design.
• Mechanical Test Setups: Experience designing mechanical test setups, including load fixtures, vibration, drop, abuse, and environmental tests.
• Analysis Tooling: Experience building analysis tooling, including AI/LLMs, Python, MATLAB, or simulation workflows, to accelerate design and iteration.
• Defense & Aerospace Vehicles: Experience developing fielded defense or aerospace vehicles where ruggedness, flight performance, and speed matter more than presentation-quality CAD.
• Excellent Interpersonal Skills: This is a highly interdisciplinary role requiring constant interface with the aerodynamics, rotorcraft, GNC, perception, electrical, and manufacturing teams to understand and integrate subsystem needs.