Senior Structures Engineer (Spaceflight)

Location: On-site at the El Segundo headquarters, California, United States. The role requires employees to be authorized to work in the United States and meet U.S. person requirements for access to export-controlled technology.

Salary: $140,000–$180,000 per year for the Senior Engineer level. Additional incentives may include stock options and/or long-term cash awards.

Company

Varda develops commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing payloads, reentry capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses.

What you will do

• Design, analyze, build, and test primary and secondary structures for spaceflight and reentry vehicles.
• Derive hardware requirements and perform initial design trades from open-ended problems and stakeholder input.
• Evaluate packaging, thermal, environmental, and loads impacts to support system-level design decisions.
• Own technical and administrative aspects of hardware delivery.
• Use hand calculations, finite element analysis, and 3D CAD to verify hardware performance.
• Design development and qualification tests, develop integration tooling, and mentor junior engineers.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant engineering discipline and 5+ years of related experience in structures for automotive, aircraft, spacecraft, or similar applications.
• Strong understanding of structural design, analysis, testing, and first-principles engineering.
• Experience with structural analysis tools such as hand calculations, Ansys, Femap, or Nastran.
• Excellent 3D CAD skills, ideally NX, including production-intent models, detailed drawings, and work instructions.
• Experience with revision-controlled documentation in a PLM system; Teamcenter is preferred.
• U.S. work authorization and U.S. person status are required because of ITAR and export-controlled technology access.

Nice to have

• Experience with aerospace hardware development from concept through delivery and qualification testing.
• Direct experience with spaceflight or reentry vehicles and spacecraft heatshields.
• Programming experience with Python or Matlab.
• Hands-on experience with assembly, fabrication, and machining of metallic parts.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employees receive flexible PTO and 12 paid holidays.
• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance with FSA and employer-matched HSA options.
• Parental leave, family-building benefits, wellness reimbursement, and sponsored One Medical memberships.
• 401(k) plan with a 6% immediately vested employer match and incentive equity.
• Relocation support may be available for new hires.
• Daily lunch, twice-weekly dinner, team events, and complimentary EV charging.