Mechanical Design & Prototyping Engineer

Haast Autonomous; Kentucky; On-site; USD 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Haast Autonomous is building an autonomous aircraft network for time-sensitive medical logistics. We seek a Mechanical Design & Prototyping Engineer to design and build aircraft systems with a strong emphasis on tailoring solutions to customer needs and rapid prototyping.

You’ll work across CAD, structures, prototyping, aircraft packaging, fixtures, payload integration, manufacturing, and flight-test support, driving hands-on design with end-user requirements in mind.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to design, build, test, and iterate hardware with customer input.
• Comfort with 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, and rapid prototyping.
• Strong attention to manufacturability, usability, and documentation for manufacturing teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop airframes, structures, mechanisms, mounts, fixtures, and prototype hardware focused on user experience.
• Own CAD for key airframe and mechanical systems, ensuring manufacturability for customer use cases.
• Design payload bays, landing gear, motor mounts, avionics mounts, access panels, brackets and internal structure.
• Build prototypes using 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, and other rapid fabrication methods with iterative feedback.
• Create detailed part drawings, assembly documentation, BOMs, and revision history for clarity.

Skills

Strong CAD skills

Prototype iteration with user feedback

Mechanical intuition

Documentation habits

Tools

SolidWorks

Fusion 360

Onshape

CATIA

NX

Job description

Haast Autonomous is building an autonomous aircraft network for time-sensitive medical logistics. We’re developing long-range VTOL aircraft, autonomy software, and the operational foundation needed to move critical payloads between hospitals, labs, and healthcare facilities on-demand faster and more reliably.

We’re early, small, and moving quickly. Joining now means you’ll have a direct role in shaping the foundation of Haast — our culture, engineering process, testing discipline, partner relationships, and the path from prototype to a real medical logistics network.

We’re looking for high-agency people who want ownership, urgency, and system-level impact from day one.

About the Role

As a Mechanical Design & Prototyping Engineer at Haast, you’ll help design and build the physical aircraft systems that make our autonomous aircraft network possible, with a strong emphasis on tailoring solutions to customer needs and prototyping user-focused experiences.

You’ll work across CAD, structures, prototyping, aircraft packaging, fixtures, payload integration, manufacturing, and flight‑test support. This is a hands‑on role focused on customer‑first design, including design for manufacturing and usability. We’re looking for someone who can design a part, build it, install it, watch it fail, improve it, and get it ready for the next test—always with the end user and customer requirements in mind.

What You’ll Do

• Design and develop airframes, structures, mechanisms, mounts, fixtures, and prototype hardware with a focus on user experience and customer requirements.
• Own CAD for key airframe and mechanical systems, ensuring designs are manufacturable and tailored to customer use cases.
• Design payload bays, landing gear, motor mounts, avionics mounts, access panels, covers, brackets, internal structure, and payload compartments optimized for user accessibility and operational efficiency.
• Build prototypes using 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, hand tools, and other rapid fabrication methods, continuously iterating based on user testing and feedback.
• Create detailed part drawings, assembly documentation, BOMs, and revision history focused on clarity and ease of use for manufacturing and customer support.
• Work with avionics and controls engineers to package sensors, wiring, batteries, antennas, and payload interfaces that support real‑world use scenarios.
• Improve the aircraft for buildability, repairability, serviceability, usability, and repeatability.
• Support aircraft assembly, pre‑flight inspections, field repairs, post‑test teardown, and customer‑driven design changes.
• Track mass properties, center of gravity, structural changes, manufacturing constraints, and customer impact.
• Help move Haast from one‑off prototypes toward aircraft hardware that can support a real autonomous medical logistics network, with customer experience at the core.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong CAD skills in SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape, CATIA, NX, or similar.
• Experience building real hardware and iterating with customer feedback, not just designing it.
• Good mechanical intuition around structures, load paths, fasteners, adhesives, vibration, packaging, manufacturability, and usability.
• Comfortable working with 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, basic shop tools, and rapid prototyping in service of user‑centered solutions.
• Ability to move quickly without being sloppy, while maintaining customer‑focused quality.
• Strong ownership and initiative. You don’t wait around for perfect requirements and proactively engage with user‑related challenges.
• Good documentation habits so the team can actually track what changed and how it addresses customer needs.
• Excitement to work in a startup environment where the aircraft, process, and company are all being built at the same time, centered on customer‑driven design.

Nice to Have

• Experience with UAVs, RC aircraft, fixed‑wing aircraft, VTOL aircraft, robotics, motorsports, or aerospace hardware.
• Composite layup, vacuum bagging, mold design, or foam‑core construction experience.
• Experience with lightweight aircraft structures, spars, ribs, motor mounts, control surfaces, or landing gear.
• Familiarity with aircraft CG, stability, vibration, thermal, avionics packaging, and user experience constraints.
• Experience on a student design team, aerospace startup, robotics team, race team, or a fast‑moving hardware project where customer feedback played a significant role.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first month, you’ll understand the aircraft architecture, clean up critical CAD and build issues, and help prepare the next prototype for testing—with attention to how the design satisfies customer needs.

Within three months, you’ll have helped us build stronger, cleaner, more repeatable aircraft hardware and improved the speed at which we can design, build, test, and iterate user‑focused designs.

We care more about agency, ownership, taste, and evidence that you can build than whether you match every bullet point. If you have worked on aircraft, drones, robots, vehicles, rockets, or other hard technical systems and want to help build something from the ground up, we want to hear from you.