Senior Mechanical Engineer - Spacecraft Instrument Mechanisms
$183,000–$198,000 year
On-siteMountain View Santa Clara County, California, United States
Job Summary
Own moving mechanism assemblies, including design, analysis, component sizing, and subsystem assembly. Create, analyze, and refine mechanism mechanical designs in SolidWorks while supporting control algorithm development and tuning. Lead mechanical portions of internal and external design reviews, write new documentation and build procedures, and contribute to continuous improvement of processes and tools. Support subsystem-level environmental testing campaigns including vibration and thermal-vacuum testing, and manage external vendors for part prototyping. Collaborate with structural, thermal, instrument, and production teams to deliver robust hardware on-time.
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience designing, building, and testing high reliability hardware
- B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
- Proficiency in CAD (SolidWorks preferred) for component and assembly design
- Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets
- Experience with ECO/DCO processes and PLM systems
- Demonstrated proficiency leading mechanical design for complex electromechanical systems
- Experience technically leading or managing a small team of engineers and/or technicians
- Extensive documentation capabilities: build procedures, test plans, design trades, DOEs
- Experience managing external vendors for part prototyping and development
- Experience with root cause analysis efforts including data analysis and testing
- Excellent communication, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills
- Experience with system integration and delivery of complex hardware/software systems
- Excited to work in a fast-paced environment with new challenges each week
- Must be a U.S. person (citizen, national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee) or eligible to access export controlled information without authorization or reasonably likely to obtain it
Desired Qualifications
- Previous experience with scanners/rotating instrument systems
- Experience with thermal vacuum and vibration testing
- Experience collaborating with engineering teams to refine designs for manufacturing and assembly processes
- Experience diving into structural analysis, dynamics, thermal design, supplier management, and everything else associated with the full lifecycle of an electromechanical product
- Flight heritage—hardware you designed that has successfully operated in space
- Experience optimizing and maturing existing designs (not only clean-sheet development)
- Familiarity with satellite payloads and mission-level mechanical integration
- Experience with deployable hardware (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
- Experience with ADCS components: reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers
- Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS) & environmental testing
- Experience with thermal management systems for spacecraft
- Large assembly management in SolidWorks PDM; experience with PLM systems (Duro or similar)
- Software skills in Python, MATLAB, or similar
- Project management experience: customer reviews, Gantt charts, risk tracking
- Experience qualifying external vendors and contract manufacturers
- Experience with optomechanical subsystem for IR or microwave instrumentation
- Experience working in cleanroom environments
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