Senior Mechanical Engineer, Solar & Deployables (Aerospace)

Location: Hybrid in San Jose, California; on-site work required three days per week.

Salary: $183,000–$198,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

hirify.global designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations delivering mission-critical Earth intelligence data.

What you will do

• Design deployable structures and supporting hardware for solar arrays from concept and trade studies through detailed design, prototyping, qualification, and production.
• Own structural, dynamic, and thermoelastic analyses, including static, modal, random vibration, and shock FEA.
• Analyze deployment dynamics, kinematics, and torque and force margins for mechanisms.
• Partner with the structural analysis group on array-to-spacecraft-bus interfaces, coupled dynamics, interface loads, and stiffness requirements.
• Build prototypes and support gravity-offloaded deployment tests, vibration, TVAC, and shock campaigns.
• Correlate analysis models with test data and deliver drawings, GD&T, BOMs, analysis reports, and design-review packages under configuration control.

Requirements

• 8+ years designing, building, and testing high-reliability hardware, including 5+ years of structural analysis.
• Experience designing precision mechanical or deployable hardware from concept through qualification.
• Strong structural FEA experience using FEMAP/NASTRAN, ANSYS, or similar tools.
• Experience with deployment dynamics, mechanism margins, analysis-to-test correlation, and environmental testing.
• Expert CAD skills, preferably SolidWorks, with mastery of drawings, GD&T, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets.
• B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field; eligibility to access U.S. export-controlled information is required under ITAR/EAR regulations.

Nice to have

• Flight heritage with hardware successfully operated in space.
• Experience designing or analyzing solar arrays, deployable structures, composite panels, or bonded joints.
• Thermal-distortion or thermoelastic analysis experience.
• Classical hand-analysis skills and analysis automation with Python, MATLAB, or similar tools.

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.
• Equal employment opportunity and reasonable accommodation support.