Senior Prototype Build Engineer

Amca • Los Angeles, CA

2d

About The Position

Amca is building airplanes for the 21st century, starting by designing new hardware that flies on today’s planes. Aviation was once humanity’s boldest ambition, but the industry hasn’t successfully built a clean-sheet aircraft in decades. We don’t think it has to be this way.
Overview
Across much of aerospace, product development is fragmented across design, build, test, and qualification, slowing iteration and locking in bad decisions early. At Amca, we bring design, development, build, test, and qualification under one roof so better hardware ships faster.
As a Senior Prototype Build Engineer, you will own the physical realization of new hardware from early concept through first builds and test-ready prototypes. You sit at the center of design, manufacturing, and test, turning ideas into working hardware while shaping designs for manufacturability, integration, and performance from day one.
This is a hands-on, high-ownership role for someone who wants to build real things, fast.

Requirements

• Exceptionally curious, fast-learning engineer who thrives in ambiguous problem spaces
• Strong hands-on experience with mechanical hardware, fabrication, and assembly
• Comfortable contributing across diverse component types, materials, and manufacturing processes
• Proven ability to reason from first principles and simplify over-constrained requirements
• Practical, build-oriented mindset with a bias toward action and iteration
• Comfortable working in an environment of continuous building, testing, and troubleshooting
• High ownership mentality with the ability to operate independently while collaborating closely

Nice To Haves

• Strong working knowledge of CAD, PDM/PLM systems, GD&T, and Materials & Processing
• Experience standing up or significantly evolving a prototype development environment
• Deep intuition for how design decisions affect manufacturability and downstream production
• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills
• Clear, structured communicator who can rapidly turn build learnings into design improvements
• Interest in mentoring and raising the bar for engineers around you

Responsibilities

• Own prototyping and first builds of new hardware from concept through test-ready assemblies
• Work closely with Product Design and Test Engineering to translate requirements into buildable hardware
• Apply deep Materials & Processes judgment to prototype designs with manufacturability, integration, and performance as core constraints
• Challenge and simplify design requirements using first-principles engineering and real-world build feedback
• Develop and own prototype build processes, tooling, fixtures, and shop workflows
• Lead equipment selection and manage onboarding and commissioning of new prototype equipment
• Provide continuous feedback to design teams to improve safety, reliability, and producibility
• Partner with production facilities and Amca subsidiaries to ensure smooth transition from prototype to production
• Serve as the manufacturing subject-matter expert in the prototype development shop

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed