Senior Spacecraft Mechanical Design Lead

Muon Space; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 202,000 - 223,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401k retirement plan

Short & long term disability and life保

Three weeks paid vacation

12 paid holidays

Unlimited sick time

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Muon Space seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to act as the mechanical design lead for a satellite class, owning bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodations and guiding mission-specific builds from requirements through launch integration. This individual contributor role carries strong technical leadership, with potential for small-team mentoring.

You will tailor Muon’s platform blocks to mission needs, design new components, and influence architecture tradeoffs among performance,

Qualifications

• 10+ years of flight hardware experience in space or related industry.
• Experience owning a spacecraft platform or major subsystem across multiple missions.
• Proven track record of maturing existing designs, not just greenfield work.
• Deep competence in structural mechanics, thermal management, and environmental testing.
• Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets; CAD, PLM, and FEA tools.
• Customer-facing experience: technical interchanges, requirements discussions, or proposals.
• Mentoring and technical leadership of engineers/technicians.
• Experience managing external vendors for part development.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical architecture and design direction for a satellite class.
• Lead mission mechanical work using the spacecraft class: bus structure, thermal, solar, payload.
• Design, analyze, and optimize spacecraft structures and subsystems.
• Iterate satellite class to improve performance, mass, cost, and manufacturability.
• Work with customers on requirements, reviews, and proposals; partner with BD.
• Define and champion mechanical design standards and processes.
• Lead design reviews (PDR/CDR/MRR) and environmental test campaigns.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary execution across teams (structural, thermal, avionics, optics, RF).
• Mentor engineers; hire, onboard, and manage a small team as needed.

Skills

Flight hardware design

Platform ownership

Design optimization

Structural analysis

Thermal modeling

TVAC testing

CAD SolidWorks

PLM

FEA tools

Vendor management

Customer communication

Mentoring

Education

BS or higher in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

SolidWorks

Python

MATLAB

FEA software

PLM systems

Job description

Muon Space seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to act as the mechanical design lead for a satellite class, owning bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodations and guiding mission-specific builds from requirements through launch integration. This individual contributor role carries strong technical leadership, with potential for small-team mentoring.

You will tailor Muon’s platform blocks to mission needs, design new components, and influence architecture tradeoffs among performance,