Staff Mechanical Engineer - Complex Mission Mechanical Lead

Muon Space•San Jose, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Muon seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to own delivery of bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload design/integration solutions for complex spacecraft missions (such as those with high agility or high power requirements) with the support from domain experts. Ownership will start at the requirements definition phase and continue through launch integration over the course of 10-15 months per mission. In this role, you will be expected to start with platform building blocks and tailor them to meet requirements, as well as identifying and designing required new mission specific components or new platform components. You will be responsible for making critical architecture decisions that balance performance, cost, and schedule. The ideal candidate brings proven space hardware experience and a systems mindset- going deep on design and analysis while collaborating across disciplines to deliver high performance solutions. Breadth is essential- you'll have touch points across the mission management, engineering, and production. This role will be an individual contributor with strong technical leadership responsibilities and will include people management of a small team of mechanical engineers. Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our Mountain View and San Jose locations.

Requirements

10+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in the space industry
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
Experience owning or significantly contributing to a spacecraft platform, product line, or major subsystem across multiple missions
Strong first-principles engineering approach with demonstrated ability to solve complex problems from fundamentals
Customer-facing experience: technical interchanges, requirements discussions, proposal contributions, or similar
Demonstrated mentorship experience with success in developing junior and mid-level engineers
Experience leading or technically guiding 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)
Strong systems-level thinking with understanding of cross-domain interplay (mechanical, thermal, structural, systems)
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 cross-functional 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 platform owner, product owner, or product-line technical lead at a space company
Direct experience contributing to winning proposals (technical volumes, orals, customer Q&A)
Experience establishing engineering standards and best practices at a departmental or organizational level
Prior 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
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 mentoring engineers who have grown into senior roles