Lead Airframe Engineer for Autonomous Cargo Aircraft

Poseidon Aerospace; California; On-site; USD 130,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Employee Health Benefit Plans

6% Retirement matching

Flexible PTO

Free lunches, snacks, and stocked frd

Job summary

Poseidon Aerospace, based in the San Francisco Bay Area with locations across the U.S., seeks a Lead Mechanical Engineer to own the structural and mechanical design of major aircraft assemblies from concept to flight testing.

You will set technical direction, lead design reviews, manage subsystem interfaces, and actively participate in CAD, analysis, manufacturing, assembly, and testing.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering or related field.
• 7+ years of relevant mechanical/structural/aerospace engineering experience.
• Experience designing primary aircraft structures or large composite airframes.
• Experience with bonded composite structures, sandwich panels, bonded inserts, and hybrid composite-metallic assemblies.
• Experience with aircraft mechanisms, actuation systems, control surfaces, doors, landing gear, or deployable systems.
• Knowledge of composite failure criteria, buckling, fatigue, vibration, modal analysis, or damage tolerance.
• Experience taking safety-critical hardware from concept through manufacturing and testing.
• Strong proficiency with CAD software such as Fusion, SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, or Creo.
• Strong proficiency with finite element analysis tools such as ANSYS, Nastran, Abaqus, Fusion Simulation, or similar.
• Ability to verify analysis using hand calculations and first-principles methods.
• Strong understanding of structural mechanics, load paths, joint design, material behavior, and mechanical failure modes.
• Experience applying GD&T and mechanical tolerancing to production drawings.
• Experience designing for manufacturing, assembly, inspection, maintenance, and repair.
• Experience leading technical reviews and making design decisions across multiple engineering teams.
• Comfortable working directly with aircraft hardware, prototypes, test fixtures, and shop tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of primary aircraft structures, mechanisms, and major airframe assemblies.
• Develop composite and metallic structures, joints, interfaces, and mounting systems.
• Define structural load paths, design requirements, margins, and validation methods.
• Perform and review hand calculations and finite element analysis.
• Evaluate strength, stiffness, buckling, fatigue, vibration, and composite failure modes.
• Lead preliminary and critical design reviews.
• Own CAD assemblies, production drawings, bills of materials, tolerances, and design releases.
• Manage mechanical interfaces between airframe, propulsion, avionics, flight controls, landing systems, and other subsystems.
• Design aircraft mechanisms, including control surfaces, doors, landing gear, actuation systems, and deployable systems.
• Work with manufacturing to develop tooling, assembly processes, inspection methods, and repair procedures.
• Plan and support component, structural, subsystem, and vehicle-level testing.
• Investigate failures, determine root causes, and implement corrective actions.
• Mentor mechanical engineers and review their design and analysis work.
• Support aircraft assembly, integration, ground testing, and flight testing.

Skills

CAD proficiency

FEA proficiency

GD&T experience

Aerospace structural design

Composite structures

Hand calculations

Prototyping & testing

Education

Bachelors in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering

Tools

MATLAB/Python for analysis

Job description

Poseidon Aerospace, based in the San Francisco Bay Area with locations across the U.S., seeks a Lead Mechanical Engineer to own the structural and mechanical design of major aircraft assemblies from concept to flight testing.

You will set technical direction, lead design reviews, manage subsystem interfaces, and actively participate in CAD, analysis, manufacturing, assembly, and testing.