Staff Mechanical Engineer - Spacecraft Mechanical Design Technical Lead (Spacecraft)

Location: San Jose, California, United States; onsite work required three days per week

Salary: $202,000–$223,000 per year, plus equity and benefits

Company

hirify.global designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations that deliver mission-critical Earth intelligence data, including climate monitoring and national security applications.

What you will do

• Own the mechanical architecture and design direction for a satellite class across multiple current and future missions.
• Lead mission mechanical development from requirements definition through launch vehicle integration, including bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodation.
• Design, analyze, and optimize spacecraft structures, mechanisms, and mechanical subsystems using first-principles engineering.
• Improve platform performance, mass, cost, manufacturability, and scalability from prototypes to constellation production.
• Lead PDR, CDR, and MRR reviews, environmental test campaigns, and coordination across structural, thermal, avionics, optical, RF, and program teams.
• Work with customers and Business Development on requirements, technical reviews, proposals, and platform enhancement opportunities; mentor and potentially manage a small mechanical engineering team.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in space or a related industry.
• Experience owning a spacecraft platform, product line, or major subsystem across multiple missions or products.
• Deep expertise in structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, or environmental testing such as TVAC and vibration.
• Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets, with proficiency in CAD, PLM, and FEA tools; SolidWorks is preferred.
• Customer-facing experience, vendor management experience, and a record of mentoring or technically leading engineers and technicians.
• Access to U.S. export-controlled information requires U.S. person status, an applicable authorization exemption, or eligibility and reasonable likelihood of obtaining the required export authorization.

Nice to have

• Platform ownership or product-line technical leadership experience at a space company.
• Contributions to winning proposals, including technical volumes, oral presentations, or customer Q&A.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, deployable structures, optomechanical payloads, or ADCS components.
• Experience with FEMAP, ANSYS, Python, or MATLAB.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment with equity compensation.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus a 401(k) retirement plan.
• Short- and long-term disability and life insurance.
• Three weeks of paid vacation for new employees, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.
• Work at a Silicon Valley facility designed for spacecraft manufacturing and flexible payload integration at scale.