Mechanical Engineer

Reflect Orbital; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% coverage of medical/dental/vision

Access to HSA, FSA, and 401(k)

Unlimited paid time off

Healthy lunches provided daily

Job summary

Reflect Orbital in Hawthorne, California, seeks a Mechanical Engineer to design and validate spacecraft subcomponents. You will be responsible for delivering critical hardware while managing tight deadlines and ensuring reliability in space environments.

The ideal candidate has 4-6 years of design experience, extensive CAD knowledge, and a collaborative approach to complex system design. Benefits include comprehensive health coverage and unlimited paid time off.

Qualifications

• 4-6 years of mechanical design experience, ideally on flight hardware.
• Experience owning spacecraft components from clean-sheet to spaceflight.
• Strong CAD skills.

Responsibilities

• Deliver flight-ready critical spacecraft components.
• Take hardware from conceptual design through qualification to on-orbit operations.
• Correlate analysis of components for reliability.

Skills

Mechanical design experience

CAD experience

System design collaboration

Knowledge of mechanical tolerances

Job description

At Reflect, you will be expected to move fast, have a lot of ownership and, most importantly, be able to effect change. If this excites you, we are interested in hearing about your best work and accomplishments across any domain and from any points in your life.

About The Role

As a Mechanical Engineer, you will be responsible for quickly designing, prototyping, and flight validating spacecraft subcomponents and integrating mechanical systems on tight deadlines. Your highest priority is delivering functional hardware that strikes a balance between simplicity, scrappiness, analytical rigor and ingenuity.

Responsibilities

• Deliver flight‑ready critical spacecraft components
• Take hardware and mechanisms from conceptual design through qualification to on‑orbit operations
• Correlate analysis of your components to ensure reliability in the space environment

Ideal Qualifications

• You bring roughly 4–6 years of mechanical design experience, ideally on flight hardware or similar high-reliability mechanical systems.
• You have owned spacecraft components from clean‑sheet to spaceflight.
• Extensive CAD experience.
• You can teach a class on the design of bolted joints.
• You know what tolerances the machine shop can hit without needing to ask them.
• You have strong experience collaboratively designing complex interdependent systems.

Even if you don’t meet 100% of the above qualifications, we are likely still interested in hearing from you. Hiring exceptional individuals is our #1 priority, and we believe that exceptional people often have highly unusual backgrounds.

We are also interested in carving out unique roles for unconventional people that we are excited about working with.

Benefits

• Broad choice of medical/dental/vision coverage, Reflect covers 100% of each base policy.
• Access to HSA, FSA, and 401(k).
• Unlimited paid time off, two weeks per year encouraged.
• Healthy lunches provided daily.

Equal Opportunity

Reflect Orbital is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Reflect Orbital is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

More About Reflect Orbital

Learn more about our team here.