Director of Structures and Mechanisms

Outpost•Los Angeles, CA

14h•$165,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

Outpost is building reusable vehicles to bring payloads back from space to Earth, providing exologistics at a planetary scale. Core technologies are advancing toward flight readiness, and the company is scaling rapidly. The Director of Structures and Mechanisms will serve as the executive technical leader for all primary structures, secondary structures, and deployable mechanisms across Outpost's Carryall vehicle. This role requires deep structural engineering expertise combined with leadership to build, scale, and lead a multi-disciplinary team of structures, mechanisms, and mechanical engineers. The Director will own the architecture, analysis, qualification, and flight certification of the entire structural system. Unlike traditional space vehicle roles, this position involves designing for a round trip, encompassing launch vibration, the vacuum of orbit, and the extreme thermal and mechanical loads of hypersonic re-entry and landing. The successful candidate will be accountable to executive leadership for overall flight readiness and should possess proven leadership, deep intuition from hardware experience, and management experience to scale a world-class team.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or higher in Mechanical, Aerospace, or Structural Engineering
10+ years of experience in the design and analysis of complex aerospace structures and mechanisms, with at least 3+ years in a management or technical leadership role leading multi-disciplined engineering teams.
Proven track record leading structures on full space vehicles or rockets (not just subsystems)
Demonstrated experience hiring, scaling, and mentoring engineering teams of 5+ engineers; comfortable setting OKRs, running performance reviews, and managing costs
Expert-level fluency in Siemens NX, SolidWorks, or similar parametric modeling software, with the ability to drive standards across the team
Deep background in structural analysis (FEA) and classical hand calculations. You must trust your hand calcs before you trust the solver
Extensive understanding of aerospace materials (aluminum, titanium, inconel, composites) and their behavior in extreme thermal environments
Deep command of CNC machining, sheet metal, and welding with a design-for-manufacturing mindset you can instill across the org

Nice To Haves

Active U.S. Government Security Clearance (not required, but beneficial)
Experience with deployable space structures and mechanisms (booms, solar arrays, antennas, or aerobrakes)
Experience in taking primary structure from concept through PDR/CDR to flight
Experience designing for high-heat environments or integrating with Thermal Protection Systems (TPS)
Deep knowledge of aerospace standards (NASA-STD-5000 series, SMC-S-016) for structural margins and testing
Prior experience as a Director, Chief Engineer, or department head at a launch, reentry, satellite, or hypersonics company

Responsibilities

Build, grow, and lead the Structures & Mechanisms organization. Recruit, mentor, and develop engineers across multiple sub-disciplines (primary structure, mechanisms, TPS, analysis)
Serve as the final sign-off for the structural architecture of the vehicle, including primary structure, interfaces to the deployable heatshield, secondary structures, deployable mechanisms, and payload bay
Partner cross-functionally to resolve system-level trades. Represent Structures in executive reviews, customer milestone reviews, and with government stakeholders
Establish and enforce analysis standards across the team — hand calculations, FEA (ANSYS/FEMAP/NASTRAN), stiffness, buckling, fatigue, and thermal expansion compatibility. Be the final technical check on margin policy and verification logic
Own the release process and quality bar for mechanical manufacturing drawings and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (ASME Y14.5) across the department
Coordinate with the production team on structural qualification campaign end-to-end — static load, random vibration, shock, deployment, and environmental testing — to certify hardware for flight.
Coordinate with the production team to stablish strategic relationships with machine shops, composite vendors, and external partners. Support make-vs-buy decisions and ensure supply chain resilience for precision flight hardware.
Brief the CEO, board, customers, and government partners on structural design, risk posture, and program status.