Senior Dynamics Engineer

K2 Space•Los Angeles, CA

2d•$140,000 - $175,000

About The Position

K2 is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, unlocking performance levels previously out of reach across every orbit. Backed by over $1 billion in total funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and T. Rowe Price — and with over $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers, we're mass-producing the highest-power satellite platforms ever built for missions from LEO to deep space. The rise of heavy-lift launch vehicles is shifting the industry from an era of mass constraint to one of mass abundance, and we believe this new era demands a fundamentally different class of spacecraft. Engineered to survive the harshest radiation environments and to fully capitalize on today's and tomorrow's massive rockets, K2 satellites deliver unmatched capability at constellation scale and across multiple orbits. With multiple launches in 2027 and plans to scale to 100 satellites a year, we're Building Bigger — helping develop the solar system and build toward a Kardashev Type II (K2) civilization. If you are a motivated individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and you're excited about contributing to the success of a high-growth Series D-funded company, we'd love for you to apply. The Role As a member of our growing dynamics team, you will help own the successful derivation of loads and environments for K2 Space satellites during ground transportation, launch, deployment, and on-orbit operation. You will build software tools and establish simulation workflows to support a variety of analyses in frequency and time domains. Within your first couple of months you will devise development testing to correlate physics models with measured data. You will also own qualification and acceptance testing of satellite hardware at the component and vehicle level. As we continue to refine our designs and scale for the future you will be responsible for delivering well-derived requirements and engineering insights to make reliable and mass-producible spacecraft.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or mathematics
5+ years of work experience in dynamics from industry or academia

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or mathematics
Strong understanding of low and high frequency dynamics (vibration, acoustics, shock, modal testing)
Deep experience with testing and measurements
Deep experience with finite element analysis software (e.g. FEMAP, Nastran)
Strong experience in software development in Python
Deep knowledge of digital signal processing, statistics, and structural mechanics
Capable of identifying and solving complex problems with little to no supervision or direction
Excellent communication skills of analysis and test insights.
Ability to work in a fast-paced, unstructured start-up environment.
Experience with coupled loads analysis (CLA) and Craig-Bampton/superelement model reduction techniques
Experience with jitter and pointing performance analysis, including Monte Carlo methods for dispersion modeling
Familiarity with rigid-body dynamics and GNC-coupled analysis, including dynamic coupling with controllers and pointing impacts
Experience with multibody dynamics simulation, including rigid-body dynamics and familiarity with Lagrangian formulations; familiarity with LS-DYNA is a plus
Experience with vibroacoustic analysis (e.g., patch, diffuse-field, Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA, e.g., Wave6), or Boundary Element Method (BEM))
Familiarity with HALT/HASS testing and dynamics-driven PCBA-level failure mechanisms (e.g., solder joint fatigue, component lead flexure)
Experience building and maintaining shared analysis tooling, including version control and continuous-integration practices

Responsibilities

Drive the definition and execution of dynamic testing at the component, subsystem, and vehicle level, including test planning and coordination, test analysis, and model correlation
Innovate on cross-disciplinary analysis and test methodologies
Evolve spacecraft dynamics approaches to optimize for the company’s business
Develop time- and frequency-domain physics models using finite element analysis (e.g., Nastran) and custom-built software (e.g., Python)
Create software tools to support data processing and simulation frameworks
Collaborate with design engineers, analysts, and external customers to develop payload products
Apply first principles in developing frameworks for both dynamics and non-dynamics analyses
Perform code reviews for simulation and analysis tools
Utilize analysis and test to provide data-driven engineering guidance and decisions
Write high quality technical documentation of tests and simulations
Derive loads, environments, and other dynamics-driven design and test criteria, including vibration, shock, and jitter maximum predicted environments and response-limit derivation (e.g., NASA 7004C)
Own coupled loads analysis (CLA), including superelement/Craig-Bampton model builds for ascent and on-orbit dynamic environments, through test-level definition
Lead jitter and pointing performance analysis, including Monte Carlo dispersion modeling and dynamic coupling with GNC control loops
Direct vibroacoustic analysis, including patch-method framework development, and lead acoustic testing of the vehicle
Drive definition of vehicle- and stack-level modal test and analysis methodologies, including ground and flight test correlation