Mechanical Engineer, Ground Systems
$135,000–$225,000 year
On-siteSouth San Francisco, California, United States
Job Summary
Own end-to-end delivery of mechanical and electromechanical subsystems from requirements through production ramp and sustaining engineering. Produce system-level trade studies, tolerance stacks, and failure mode analyses to bound safety-critical designs. Create CAD assemblies and detailed drawings for 20–100 part systems while leading design reviews and DFM efforts. Develop verification plans for environmental and fatigue testing, execute test campaigns, and drive corrective actions for reliability improvements. Lead supplier selection and qualification, managing handoffs to reduce NPI cycle time and scrap rates. Partner daily with cross-functional teams to align requirements, eliminate deployment blockers, and translate prototypes into medium-volume production designs. Serve as technical authority in design reviews and postmortems, leading incident root-cause investigations. Mentor peers to raise design quality across the team.
Required Qualifications
- 5–10+ years of mechanical/electromechanical design engineering experience delivering complex subsystems or products through NPI into production
- Proven track record owning complex subassemblies or full systems over at least 2 product programs (concept, prototype, validation, production)
- Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals including load estimation, structural hand calcs, FEA, material selection, clean CAD designs and design-for-assembly/field-service practices
- Demonstrated experience designing mechanisms and actuator systems, including selection and integration of motors, gearboxes, bearings, linear actuators, springs, linkages, sensors, and other motion-control components
- Experience evaluating mechanism kinematics, actuator loads, friction, efficiency, backlash, compliance, duty cycle, wear, fatigue, and life
- Practical knowledge of manufacturing methods such as welding, sheetmetal forming, extrusion, CNC machining, injection molding, etc
- Experience partnering with contract manufacturers to ramp up production of high volume lines
- Strong CAD and documentation skills: able to own 3D assemblies and 2D detail drawings for 20–100 part systems; experience with NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent
- Disciplined processes: Your parts are released, BOMs are maintained, SOPs created for builds, and timelines are up-to-date
- Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline
- Ability to periodically (<10%) travel to visit customers and suppliers
Desired Qualifications
- NX is your primary CAD tool
- Experience designing autonomous machinery, robotics, industrial automation, aerospace ground equipment, material-handling systems, or other electromechanical products
- Experience developing custom actuators, drivetrains, latching systems, or compliant mechanisms
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