Principal Mechanical Engineer

Muon Space • San Jose, CA

7h • $239,000 - $260,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Muon seeks a Principal Mechanical Engineer to join our Mechanical Engineering team. This role focuses on leveraging deep space industry experience to optimize and mature our existing spacecraft designs while mentoring and developing our mechanical engineering team. As a Principal Engineer, you will apply your extensive flight heritage to enhance Muon's current spacecraft architectures, driving improvements in performance, manufacturability, and reliability. You'll serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor across the organization, using your expertise to guide critical design decisions and establish best practices that scale with our growing constellation production. The ideal candidate brings proven space hardware experience and a passion for developing others. You'll be a force multiplier—someone who elevates the entire team through hands-on mentorship, rigorous design reviews, and the establishment of standards that capture lessons learned. You have a "systems mindset" and can balance optimization of existing designs with strategic thinking about long-term product evolution. This is a Principal-level (L7) individual contributor role focused on technical leadership and mentorship, potentially including some people management. Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it does require onsite work at our Mountain View and San Jose locations.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in the space industry, with multiple programs through on-orbit operations
• Demonstrated flight heritage—hardware you designed that has successfully operated in space
• Proven track record of optimizing and maturing existing designs, not just clean-sheet development
• Expert professional and technical knowledge with the ability to guide and role model use of professional concepts in developing solutions to critical issues
• Strong mentorship experience with demonstrated success in developing junior and mid-level engineers
• Direct or indirect experience leading teams of engineers and/or technicians
• Deep competence in one or more of: structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, environmental testing (TVAC, vibration)
• Extensive documentation capabilities: build procedures, test plans, design trades, best practices guides
• Mastery of standard tools: CAD (SolidWorks preferred), PLM, ERP, FEA, test hardware and equipment
• Expert-level skills with drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets
• Experience managing external vendors for part development and manufacturing
• Excellent communication, presentation, and coordination skills
• B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
• A desire to change the way the world understands and reacts to climate and environmental data

Nice To Haves

• Experience as a recognized technical leader or subject matter expert in a spacecraft organization
• Prior Principal, Staff, or Lead Engineer title at a space company
• Experience with deployable structures (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
• Optomechanical instrument or payload design experience
• Experience with reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers, or other ADCS components
• Experience with deployable hardware
• Large assembly management in SolidWorks PDM, Duro, or similar PLM
• Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS)
• Software skills in Python, MATLAB, or similar
• Experience qualifying external vendors and contract manufacturers
• Track record of establishing engineering standards at an organizational level

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Design Optimization
• Serve as a principal technical advisor and domain expert, applying extensive space industry experience to optimize and mature existing spacecraft mechanical designs
• Lead architecture refinement efforts to improve performance, reduce mass, lower cost, and enhance manufacturability of current spacecraft platforms
• Oversee creative research and innovation strategies; provide guidance on advanced technical issues to leadership; work to rationalize and standardize company-wide standards and principles
• Use your flight heritage and lessons learned to identify design improvements and risk reduction opportunities across the spacecraft portfolio
• Create roadmaps with 1+ year horizons that influence the future direction of Muon's products in alignment with business objectives and the evolving space industry
• Mentorship & Team Development
• Act as a force multiplier by providing strong, hands-on mentorship to mechanical engineers at all levels, developing their technical skills and systems-level thinking
• Lead rigorous design reviews, providing constructive feedback that elevates the quality of engineering work across the team
• Guide and coach team members on cross-domain execution, helping them understand the interplay between mechanical, thermal, structural, and systems engineering
• Contribute broadly to hiring, onboarding, and training of mechanical engineering talent; help build a culture of technical excellence
• Document and disseminate best practices, design patterns, and lessons learned to accelerate team development
• Manage direct reports of mechanical engineers of all levels, if needed
• Design & Analysis
• Apply First Principles engineering and extensive knowledge of theories, practices, and design matters to solve complex, long-term challenges
• Lead the application of existing design principles while guiding development of new approaches and standards
• Perform and guide stress, dynamic, and thermal analyses to optimize designs including joint design, stiffness analyses, and weight reduction
• Work with structural and thermal analysts to iterate and refine designs for performance and manufacturability
• Oversee and directly make economically sound make vs. buy decisions, balancing rapid capability demonstration with constellation scale-up requirements
• Execution & Delivery
• Own delivery of optimized mechanical systems, coordinating multidisciplinary efforts between analysts, avionics, thermal, optical, RF, and program teams
• Review and improve existing test practices for vibration, TVAC, and EMI campaigns, applying lessons learned from prior flight programs
• Influence design decisions to ensure hardware is optimized for both build efficiency and test effectiveness
• Drive products to scale from prototype builds to quantities of hundreds or thousands
• Build strong relationships with teams inside and outside Muon, leveraging your industry network and knowledge

Benefits

• In addition to salary, full-time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance.
• We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees