Mechanical Test Engineer, Deployable Antenna Structures

E-Space•Arlington, TX

8d•$140,000 - $210,000•Onsite

About The Position

E-Space is seeking a hands-on Mechanical Test Engineer to own ground testing of the physical deployment of its large antenna structure. The engineer will work with deployable structures, deployment mechanisms, test fixtures, and gravity-offload equipment. The work includes building test setups, operating hardware, measuring motion and forces, and investigating unexpected behavior. The role turns hardware observations into evidence that the antenna can deploy reliably and achieve its required geometry, while distinguishing antenna behavior from effects introduced by ground test equipment. The position is based onsite in Arlington, Texas, and requires hands-on bench work and presence at test facilities. Some travel between sites is expected. The engineer will own the antenna assembly’s mechanical deployment test program, from requirements and procedures through fixture development, test execution, data reduction, and reporting, and will coordinate with mechanism, structures, and other responsible engineers.

Requirements

BS, MS, or PhD in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, or equivalent practical engineering experience.
Hands-on experience testing physical mechanisms or deployable hardware, including personal responsibility for setting up, operating, measuring, and troubleshooting hardware.
Practical mechanical judgment and ability to reason about forces, motion, friction, stiffness, alignment, and test-fixture effects on the hardware being measured.
Experience developing test procedures and using force, torque, motion, or optical measurement instrumentation to obtain repeatable data.
Ability to investigate anomalies systematically and explain what the evidence supports, what remains uncertain, and what should be tested next.
Understanding that ground testing under gravity does not automatically reproduce flight deployment conditions.
Flexibility to occasionally work extended hours or weekends during critical periods.

Nice To Haves

Deployment testing of antennas, solar arrays, booms, or other flexible flight structures.
Design or operation of gravity-offload rigs, including characterization of friction and support compliance.
Experience with deployable booms, including rollable, telescoping, hinged, or coilable lattice types, and membrane or other tensioned deployable hardware.
Photogrammetry or other optical measurement of deployed shape and motion.
Experience with mechanism friction and lubrication across temperature ranges, thermal-vacuum deployment tests, or deployment model-test correlation.

Responsibilities

Own the antenna assembly’s mechanical deployment test program, including requirements, procedures, fixture development, test execution, data reduction, and reporting.
Design, build, and improve gravity-offload and support fixtures for large flexible structures, and characterize rig friction and compliance to separate their effects from antenna behavior.
Set up and conduct physical deployment tests; measure force and torque profiles, boom-tip trajectories, deployment timing, and deployed shape using appropriate instrumentation and optical measurement methods.
Investigate unexpected motion, inconsistent deployment, and geometry outliers through inspection, measurements, and controlled follow-up tests.
Establish deployment repeatability against defined requirements and, where required by the test plan, characterize sensitivity to sequencing, temperature, and lubricant state.
Work with the deployment mechanism team to characterize actuator output, locked-state stiffness, and backlash.
Coordinate subsystem testing and assembly-level deployment testing with the responsible engineers.
Work with the IAS structures analyst to correlate test results with structural and deployment models, quantify ground-test artifacts, and bound what the results establish about flight deployment.