Spacecraft Test Engineer (Aerospace)

Location: On-site in Burlingame, California, United States. U.S. export regulations require applicants to be U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or other protected individuals under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Salary: $145,000–$175,000 per year, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global develops Pulsar, a low-Earth-orbit satellite infrastructure platform providing precise, resilient positioning and navigation services.

What you will do

• Own mechanical, materials, and environmental testing across spacecraft development, from early R&D and design de-risking through qualification and acceptance.
• Develop coupon-, component-, subassembly-, and spacecraft-level tests to characterize materials, interfaces, processes, and hardware.
• Lead first-article spacecraft vibration testing, including test planning, fixture and instrumentation development, execution, data review, anomaly resolution, and reporting.
• Support thermal vacuum and thermal cycling campaigns, including chamber interfaces, thermal instrumentation, performance monitoring, and post-test analysis.
• Build scalable in-house testing capabilities, procedures, calibration practices, data acquisition systems, and engineering databases.
• Collaborate with mechanical, structures, thermal, electrical, payload, GNC, systems, manufacturing, operations, vendors, and external test laboratories.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of relevant engineering experience with ownership of hardware testing and verification.
• Experience developing and executing mechanical or environmental tests on complex hardware, including vibration, thermal vacuum, thermal cycling, shock, or structural testing.
• Strong knowledge of structural mechanics, materials, thermal effects, fasteners, joints, and interfaces.
• Experience with test fixtures, instrumentation, data acquisition, test data interpretation, anomaly investigation, and root-cause analysis.
• Ability to work hands-on with flight hardware and test equipment and produce clear test plans, procedures, reports, and verification documentation.

Nice to have

• Experience leading spacecraft-level vibration or TVAC campaigns and first-article or qualification testing.
• Experience with materials characterization, allowables testing, thermal or structural model correlation, and spacecraft environmental test standards.
• Experience designing fixtures and ground support equipment with CAD.
• Familiarity with accelerometers, thermocouples, RTDs, strain gauges, load cells, data acquisition systems, and test automation.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, LabVIEW, spacecraft integration, launch operations, external test facilities, or vendors.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on technical ownership with direct influence on spacecraft design, manufacturing, qualification, and flight hardware.
• Opportunity to establish testing capabilities and scalable processes for a growing spacecraft fleet.
• Cross-functional work across the full spacecraft engineering and operations organization.
• Equity included in the compensation package.
• Inclusive workplace committed to equal consideration for qualified applicants.