Senior Mechanical Engineering Lead - sUAS & Production

Decisive Point; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision plans

401(k) Retirement Savings Plan

Equity grants for new hires

Unlimited PTO

Holiday calendar including two-weekend

Job summary

Firestorm is seeking a Mechanical Engineering Senior Manager to lead the airframes, structures, mechanisms, and integration hardware across our sUAS platforms. You will own technical direction, drive design standards, and oversee a high-performing team in a fast-paced environment.

You will hire, mentor, and develop engineers at all levels, collaborating with manufacturing, procurement, and quality to ensure producible designs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering or related field (Master's preferred).
• 10+ years of mechanical engineering experience, with aerospace, defense, automotive, or hardware-intensive industries.
• 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring and performance reviews.
• Demonstrated history of building high-performing engineering teams.
• Deep technical credibility in mechanical design: structures, mechanisms, composites and/or metallic structures, GD&T, tolerance analysis, and DFM.
• Hands-on experience leading designs from concept through qualification to production.
• Experience with change control, PLM systems (Arena, Windchill, Teamcenter, or equivalent), and configuration management at scale.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for mechanical engineering across Firestorm's aircraft platforms—structures, mechanisms, integration, packaging, and production hardware.
• Own design standards, drawing standards, and engineering documentation practices; ensure consistency and quality across the team's output.
• Drive change control discipline: lead the team's participation in CCB, ECR/ECO workflows, and configuration management across Arena PLM.
• Lead and participate in design reviews (PDR, CDR, structural reviews, production readiness reviews); provide technical judgment on trade studies and architecture decisions.
• Partner with manufacturing and quality on producibility, DFM/DFA, first-article inspection, and disposition of non-conformances.
• Represent mechanical engineering in cross-functional IPTs, customer technical interchanges, and program reviews.
• Lead, grow, and develop a multi-disciplinary mechanical engineering team spanning structures, mechanisms, GSE, and packaging.
• Hire across all levels—from interns and new graduates to principal engineers—and build a pipeline of mechanical talent that scales with the company.
• Mentor and develop early-career engineers: assign stretch work, run structured 1:1s, give honest feedback, and create clear paths from junior to senior contributor.
• Coach senior engineers into technical leadership and IPT lead roles.
• Set performance expectations, run performance reviews, and own compensation and leveling decisions for the team.
• Build a team culture that values rigorous engineering, hands-on work, and personal ownership of outcomes.
• Plan and resource mechanical engineering work across multiple programs; balance new development, sustaining engineering, and customer-driven changes.
• Partner with program management to commit to schedules, identify risks, and deliver on milestones.
• Drive productionization and transition from prototype to rate production across Firestorm's aircraft lines.
• Support test and fielding events, including on-site presence for structural and integration test campaigns.

Skills

Leadership

People management

Cross-functional collaboration

Strong communication

Systems thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering or related field

Tools

Arena PLM

Windchill

Teamcenter

Job description

Firestorm is seeking a Mechanical Engineering Senior Manager to lead the airframes, structures, mechanisms, and integration hardware across our sUAS platforms. You will own technical direction, drive design standards, and oversee a high-performing team in a fast-paced environment.

You will hire, mentor, and develop engineers at all levels, collaborating with manufacturing, procurement, and quality to ensure producible designs.