Engineer (Formula SAE Track)

Icarus•El Segundo, CA

2d•$120,000 - $160,000•Onsite

About The Position

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere. This role is built for Formula SAE people. If you were the person on your team who got things built, stayed late, solved ugly problems, learned whatever was needed, and refused to quit until the car worked, we want to talk. You do not need a perfect resume. You do not need years of industry experience. You do not need to have had the fanciest title on the team. You need grit, horsepower, humility, technical curiosity, and the will to become great. We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead. You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster. We expect full extreme ownership. This is a high-trust, no-BS team, and everyone pulls their weight. We want builders. No hand-holding. No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. No sitting in meetings all day. Just raw engineering, real hardware, and real flight. You must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits. We move fast. We go to Mojave at 4 am in the morning. We expect results and an obsession with quality and speed. You will be a core executor of flight systems, taking them from concept to reality and driving rapid iteration loops. You will work across design, integration, testing, and flight. If you want real ownership, real hardware, and real flight milestones, this is it. No tourists. No bystanders. Only builders.

Requirements

Formula SAE experience
Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, or exceptional student willing to take a break from school to join a startup
Evidence that you have built real hardware, not just worked on presentations
High grit, high urgency, high ownership
Strong mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, or systems instincts
Willingness to learn anything required to get the aircraft flying
Comfortable working hands-on in a factory, lab, desert, field environment, or wherever the mission requires
Able to take feedback, improve quickly, and keep pushing
No ego about doing dirty work
Obsessed with building, testing, learning, and getting better

Nice To Haves

Owned a subsystem on a Formula SAE car
Manufactured parts yourself
Stayed late to debug problems before competition
Wired harnesses, machined parts, tuned systems, ran tests, or fixed failures in the field
CAD, FEA, machining, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience
Have a story about something breaking and how you fixed it

Responsibilities

Design and fly lightweight, high-reliability structures for stratospheric aircraft
Own mechanical subsystems from concept to flight
Perform first-principles sizing, trade studies, and rapid iteration
Build, test, break, and refine flight hardware
Support integration, production, and flight operations
Work closely with avionics, GNC, power, RF, and software teams