Founding Aero-Mechanical Engineer: Airframe & Flight

Approach Venture; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonuses

Medical coverage

Meals provided

Paid time off

Job summary

Approach Venture seeks a Founding Mechanical & Aerodynamics Engineer in Hawthorne, CA to own the airframe, mechanisms, and subsystem packaging. You will move between CAD, CFD, and testing to optimize performance and cost for scalable production.

The role covers aerodynamic analyses, tradeoffs, and integration with suppliers and machine shops, with equity and early-stage growth opportunities in a seed-stage defense startup.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience owning complex hardware assemblies.
• Hands-on fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing experience.
• Strong proficiency in 3D CAD and production drawing development.
• Practical knowledge of GD&T and tolerance analysis.
• Experience designing hardware for manufacturing rather than prototype-only development.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical architecture of the vehicle, including airframe, structures, control surfaces, mechanisms, and subsystem integration.
• Develop concepts from early vehicle layout through detailed design, fabrication, qualification, and flight.
• Run CFD and other aerodynamic analyses to understand vehicle performance across the flight envelope.
• Size and optimize control surfaces based on stability, control authority, maneuverability, and mission requirements.
• Use aerodynamic results to influence vehicle shape, packaging, and overall configuration.
• Perform structural, thermal, and dynamic analysis using both first-principles calculations and FEA.
• Define and defend structural margins across relevant load cases.
• Balance aerodynamic performance against mass, stiffness, manufacturability, complexity, and unit cost.
• Reduce part count and production cost through material selection, process development, and thoughtful design simplification.
• Own CAD models, production drawings, GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, bills of materials, and configuration control.
• Design hardware across machining, sheet metal, composites, castings, molded components, and other relevant manufacturing processes.
• Develop fixtures, tooling, and assembly approaches that support faster and more repeatable production.
• Plan and execute static, vibration, shock, thermal, and other environmental qualification testing.
• Work directly with machine shops, fabricators, and suppliers to improve manufacturability, quality, cost, and lead time.
• Use internal fabrication capabilities to prototype, test, and iterate quickly.
• Support vehicle assembly, integration, ground testing, and flight-test operations.
• Reconstruct vehicle performance from flight data and compare results against analytical and simulation models.
• Lead teardown, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions following hardware or flight failures.

Skills

3D CAD

FEA

Aerodynamics

GD&T

Python

MATLAB

Manufacturing experience

Education

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline

Tools

CFD

Job description

Approach Venture seeks a Founding Mechanical & Aerodynamics Engineer in Hawthorne, CA to own the airframe, mechanisms, and subsystem packaging. You will move between CAD, CFD, and testing to optimize performance and cost for scalable production.

The role covers aerodynamic analyses, tradeoffs, and integration with suppliers and machine shops, with equity and early-stage growth opportunities in a seed-stage defense startup.