Engineer (YC Track)

Icarus•El Segundo, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Icarus is seeking engineers for its YC Track program, focusing on building solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time. This role is ideal for individuals who have a proven track record of shipping real products, demonstrating grit, horsepower, humility, and technical curiosity. The position offers the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with hardware development, from concept to flight, within a small, high-ownership team. The ultimate goal is to re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

Requirements

Have built and shipped something real — a product with users, a company, a piece of hardware, an open-source project people depend on
Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, self-taught builder, or someone willing to take a break from school or a startup idea to join a small team doing something hard
Evidence that you built it yourself, not that you managed someone who did
High grit, high urgency, high ownership
Strong software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, 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
Must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits
The only hard requirement is that you have built and shipped something real

Nice To Haves

Founded something, even if it failed. Especially if it failed and you can tell us exactly why
Have a side project that got harder than you expected and you finished it anyway
Have CAD, FEA, machining, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience
Have a story about something breaking at the worst possible moment and how you fixed it