Verification & Qualification Engineer - Solar & Deployables

Muon Space•San Jose, CA

13h•$183,000 - $198,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Muon seeks a Verification & Qualification Engineer to own requirements, verification, and qualification for the mission-critical solar and deployable systems that power our spacecraft — solar arrays, solar array drive assemblies (SADA), hold-down and release mechanisms (HDRMs), hinges, dampers, and latches. As we develop these mechanisms in-house, this role ensures traceability from requirements definition through qualified flight hardware. You'll be the connective tissue of a new hardware group's product development process: flowing down requirements, maintaining the verification matrix, planning qualification campaigns ahead of need, and hands-on executing tests alongside the design engineers — helping establish a lightweight-but-rigorous verification framework. This is a strong fit for engineers from structured product-development backgrounds, including medical device (design controls, DHF, IQ/OQ/PQ), who want to apply that rigor to spaceflight hardware. Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our San Jose three days a week.

Requirements

5+ years of experience developing, building, or testing complex, high-reliability hardware, including 3+ years in requirements management, verification, or qualification
Demonstrated experience with requirements traceability and structured verification (RVTM or equivalent, e.g., design controls / DHF in medical device)
Experience planning and/or executing qualification, acceptance, or environmental test campaigns
Strong understanding of verification methods — test, analysis, inspection, demonstration — and how to select and defend them
Hands-on test experience: procedures, fixtures, instrumentation, data capture, and reporting
Excellent written documentation skills: test plans, procedures, reports, and traceability records
Strong systems-level thinking and attention to detail, with the discipline to maintain rigor under schedule pressure
Excellent communication and cross-functional coordination skills
B.S. or higher in Mechanical, Electrical, Systems, Biomedical, Aerospace Engineering, or related field

Nice To Haves

Space industry experience with flight hardware qualification (mechanisms, arrays, or structures)
Familiarity with space environmental test standards (NASA-STD-5017, GEVS, ECSS, MIL-STD-810/1540)
Medical device or other regulated-industry background (design controls, ISO 13485/14971, IQ/OQ/PQ) applied to hardware development
Experience with requirements management tools (DOORS, Jama, or similar)
Experience with reliability engineering, FMECA, or single-point-failure analysis
Familiarity with deployment testing and gravity-offload methods
Software skills in Python, MATLAB, or similar for data reduction

Responsibilities

Capture, flow down, and manage requirements for solar and deployable systems from mission level to component level; build and maintain the requirements verification and traceability matrix (RVTM)
Partner with design engineers to ensure requirements are complete, verifiable, and testable before design maturity gates
Develop qualification, acceptance, and protoqualification test plans well ahead of hardware availability, defining test levels, margins, and success criteria per applicable standards (e.g., NASA-STD-5017, GEVS)
Identify verification risks and long-lead test needs — fixtures, facilities, instrumentation — early, and drive them to resolution
Coordinate and hands-on execute test campaigns across internal and external facilities: vibration, TVAC, thermal cycling, shock, deployment with gravity offload, and mechanism life testing
Own test data capture, reduction, and reporting; author qualification and acceptance data packages
Manage nonconformances and anomalies during test, driving closure with root cause and corrective action
Contribute to FMECA and single-point-failure analysis to ensure test coverage addresses credible failure modes
Help establish the group's structured product development process — design reviews, verification gates, documentation standards — and represent verification in design reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR, MRR)