Senior Mechanical Engineer, Solar & Deployables

Muon Space•San Jose, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Muon seeks a Senior Mechanical Engineer who pairs strong design skills with a deep analysis background to join our new Solar & Deployables hardware group. You'll design the deployable structures that carry our solar arrays — mission-critical, single-point-failure hardware — and own the structural, dynamic, and thermoelastic analyses that prove those designs will survive launch and perform on orbit. Design and analysis go hand-in-hand in this role: the engineer who designs the hardware is the engineer who understands its margins. As a foundational member of the group, you'll work closely with our mechanisms and photovoltaics leads, partner with Muon's dedicated structural analysis group on the critical interactions between the arrays and the spacecraft bus, and help establish the design and analysis practices that scale from prototype builds through constellation-quantity production. This position is hybrid and requires working on-site in our San Jose, CA office three days per week.

Requirements

8+ years of experience designing, building, and testing high-reliability hardware, including 5+ years of structural analysis
Proven track record designing precision mechanical or deployable hardware from concept through qualification
Strong command of structural FEA — static, modal, and random vibration — using FEMAP/NASTRAN, ANSYS, or similar
Experience analyzing deployment dynamics and mechanism margins (torque/force, kinematics)
Demonstrated experience correlating analysis models to test data (modal surveys, vibration, deployment)
Expert-level CAD skills (SolidWorks preferred) with mastery of drawings, GD&T, and tolerance/mass budgets
Working understanding of environmental testing (vibration, TVAC, shock)
Excellent communication and documentation skills, including analysis reports and margin summaries
B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field

Nice To Haves

Flight heritage — hardware you designed or analyzed that has operated successfully in space
Direct experience designing or analyzing solar arrays or deployable structures
Thermal-distortion or thermoelastic analysis experience for precision or deployed structures
Composite panel and bonded-joint design and analysis experience
Strong classical hand-analysis skills (strength, joints, fasteners, preload)
Analysis automation in Python, MATLAB, or similar

Responsibilities

Design deployable structures and supporting hardware for Muon's solar arrays, from concept and trade studies through detailed design, prototyping, and qualification
Own the structural, dynamic, and thermoelastic analyses of your designs, and support analysis across the group's arrays and mechanisms
Perform structural FEA — static, modal, random vibration, and shock — and analyze deployment dynamics, kinematics, and torque/force margins
Partner with Muon's dedicated structural analysis group to understand and manage the critical interactions between the solar arrays and the spacecraft bus — interface loads, coupled dynamics, and stiffness requirements
Build and test prototypes; support deployment testing with gravity offload and environmental test campaigns (vibration, TVAC, shock)
Correlate analysis models against modal, vibration, and deployment test data, and iterate designs based on results
Produce and release engineering documentation: drawings, GD&T, BOMs, and analysis reports under configuration control
Deliver design and analysis packages for design reviews (PDR, CDR, MRR) and document methods, margins, and best practices
Support designs from prototype builds through constellation-scale production