Technical Lead- Spacecraft Mechanical Design Full Time

About the role

Muon seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to serve as the mechanical design technical lead for one of our satellite classes. You'll own and iterate on the class-level mechanical architecture- bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodation- while also owning specific mission instances built on that class, from requirements definition through launch integration, typically over 10-15 months per mission.

You'll start with Muon's platform building blocks and tailor them to mission needs, designing new mission-specific and platform components where required and making architecture decisions that balance performance, cost, and schedule. This is an individual contributor role with strong technical leadership responsibilities, including the potential for people management of a small team of mechanical engineers.

Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our San Jose location three days a week.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical architecture and design direction for a satellite class, balancing the needs of multiple concurrent and future missions
• Serve as mission mechanical lead for specific missions using your satellite class, delivering bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload mechanical solutions from requirements definition through launch vehicle integration
• Lead the design, analysis, and optimization of spacecraft structures, mechanisms, and mechanical subsystems, applying first-principles engineering to problems beyond established approaches
• Iterate and evolve the satellite class — improving performance, mass, cost, and manufacturability — and ensure designs scale from prototype builds to constellation quantities
• Work directly with customers on requirements, technical reviews, and proposal content; partner with Business Development to identify platform enhancement opportunities
• Define and champion mechanical design standards, review processes, and best practices across the organization
• Lead design reviews (PDR, CDR, MRR) and environmental test campaigns (vibration, TVAC, EMI)
• Coordinate multidisciplinary execution across structural, thermal, avionics, optical, RF, and program teams
• Mentor mechanical engineers at all levels; hire, onboard, and manage a small team as needed

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in space or other related industry
• Experience owning a spacecraft platform, product line, or major subsystem across multiple missions or products
• Proven track record of optimizing and maturing existing designs, not only clean-sheet development
• Deep competence in one or more of: structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, environmental testing (TVAC, vibration)
• Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets; proficiency with CAD (SolidWorks preferred), PLM, and FEA tools
• Customer-facing experience: technical interchanges, requirements discussions, or proposal contributions
• Demonstrated success mentoring and technically leading engineers and/or technicians
• 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

Nice-to-have Skills

• Experience as a platform owner or product-line technical lead at a space company
• Direct contributions to winning proposals (technical volumes, orals, customer Q&A)
• Experience establishing engineering standards and best practices at an organizational level
• Experience with deployable structures (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
• Optomechanical instrument or payload design experience
• Experience with ADCS components: reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers
• Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS); software skills in Python or MATLAB

Salary

The salary range for this role is $190,000 - $216,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.