Founding Mechanical Engineer

About the Role

You will own mechanical development across the hardware lifecycle—from defining requirements and evaluating concepts to detailed design, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing release.

The strongest candidates can move comfortably between engineering calculations, CAD, simulation, and the workshop. You should be able to explain why a design will work, build the hardware, measure its performance, and use the results to improve it.

What You’ll Do

• Own mechanical hardware development. Translate system objectives into requirements, mechanical architectures, component designs, and integrated assemblies.
• Make quantitative design decisions. Evaluate tradeoffs involving mass, stiffness, strength, thermal performance, reliability, cost, and manufacturability.
• Design complex parts and assemblies. Develop detailed CAD models, engineering drawings, bills of materials, interface definitions, and release documentation.
• Analyze and validate designs. Use engineering calculations and appropriate simulation tools to assess structural behavior, vibration, thermal performance, and other relevant operating conditions.
• Build and test prototypes. Develop fixtures and test setups, support fabrication and assembly, instrument hardware, and evaluate performance against requirements.
• Resolve failures at their source. Investigate discrepancies between predicted and measured behavior, identify root causes, and implement corrective design changes.
• Integrate mechanical and electronic systems. Collaborate on packaging, mounting, cooling, cable routing, environmental protection, and service access.
• Work directly with manufacturers. Partner with machinists, fabricators, suppliers, and assembly teams to improve tolerances, processes, quality, and lead times.
• Move hardware toward production. Apply design for manufacturing and assembly, manage revisions, and develop repeatable build and inspection methods.
• Operate with technical ownership. Identify uncertainty early, propose practical experiments, and drive open engineering problems to resolution.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent demonstrated engineering experience.
• Demonstrated ownership of complex mechanical hardware from initial design through physical build and testing.
• Strong fundamentals in solid mechanics, materials, machine design, heat transfer, and manufacturing processes.
• Advanced proficiency in a parametric CAD platform such as SolidWorks, Siemens NX, Creo, or CATIA.
• Experience producing manufacturing drawings using GD&T, appropriate datum schemes, and tolerance stack analysis.
• Ability to perform engineering calculations and use FEA appropriately, including selecting boundary conditions, evaluating model assumptions, and checking results against physical expectations.
• Practical knowledge of precision machining, sheet metal fabrication, additive manufacturing, and mechanical assembly.
• Hands-on experience assembling, measuring, troubleshooting, and modifying hardware.
• Ability to explain technical decisions through calculations, test results, and clearly documented tradeoffs.
• Comfort working independently with evolving requirements and limited precedent.

Preferred Experience

• Aerospace, unmanned aircraft, robotics, autonomous systems, space hardware, or other demanding electromechanical products.
• Lightweight structures, precision mechanisms, actuators, bearings, seals, or composite assemblies.
• Mechanical packaging and thermal management for embedded computing, sensors, radar, or RF electronics.
• Environmental testing involving vibration, shock, temperature cycling, ingress protection, or corrosion.
• Fatigue, modal, nonlinear structural, or thermal analysis, with experience correlating simulations to test data.
• Python, MATLAB, or similar tools for engineering calculations, test automation, optimization, and data analysis.
• Transitioning prototypes into repeatable manufacturing processes.
• Effective use of AI-assisted engineering tools, with independent verification of outputs.

Compensation: $130,000-$200,000 + Equity (Pre-seed / VC backed)

Location: Hybrid, San Diego