Mechanical Design Engineer

Mechanical Design Engineer

Location: Onsite | Leander, TX
Clearance: Must be eligible to obtain a Secret or Top Secret/SCI security clearance
Employment Type: Full-time, salaried, with full benefits

The Company & Mission:

We're working with an early stage, well capitalized defense technology company building reusable, modular weapon systems that give small unmanned aircraft a repeatable, lethal effect, including counter drone applications. The founding team has built hardware at some of the most demanding engineering organizations in the country, and the product is already moving out of the lab and into real world testing with operational units. The mission is straightforward: give the United States and its allies an affordable, reusable answer to the drone threats of modern warfare, rather than trying to out produce adversaries unit for unit.

What This Role is All About:

As a Mechanical Design Engineer, your job is to design, build, test, and ship mechanical systems that survive real world use. From early prototypes to scaled production, you own your parts end to end. If it breaks, you fix it. If it does not exist yet, you design it. If it works on paper but fails in the field, it is not done.

Extreme ownership is the baseline here, including a willingness to work late hours and weekends when the mission requires it. This is real ownership, not a task list, hardware that moves from bench to field fast, a team that values execution over ego, and a mission that actually matters.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Own the mechanical integrity, performance, and manufacturability of your designs, from concept through production, with no handoffs
• Design components, mechanisms, and structures (linkages, gears, motors, actuators, and assemblies) that hold up under real load and work cleanly with everyone else's parts
• Build fast using in house tools or outside vendors, owning the loop from CAD to part to install to revision
• Test like it is going to the field, because it is: measure performance, identify failure modes, and fix them. Paper success does not count
• Design for manufacturability from day one, working directly with manufacturing and machinists for precision, repeatability, and scale
• Source materials, components, and vendors yourself to keep builds moving, solving supply problems without waiting on permission
• Step into whatever needs doing as priorities shift. There is no "that's not my job," only "what needs to be done"
• Document designs, tests, processes, and lessons learned so hardware can be rebuilt, and raise the bar on safety, reliability, and speed every cycle

What You Bring:

• Proven, hands on mechanical design experience
• Strong CAD and GD&T capability
• Ability to work independently in high stakes, fast moving environments
• A self starter with a bias for action, high accountability, and resilience under pressure
• Servant leader mentality, comfortable jumping between different and rapidly changing projects
• Must meet U.S. government export control eligibility requirements (U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, or otherwise eligible for the required government authorization)

Bonus Points:

• Experience with weapons systems, UAVs, aerospace, or other high performance mechanisms
• A track record of designing hardware that survives testing, not just hardware that survives review
• Additive manufacturing and 3D printer operation and maintenance
• Experience designing for production, not just for prototypes
• Time in a startup or small team environment where your impact was immediate and visible
• Onshape experience is a plus; willingness to transition to it is required

Benefits:

• Competitive salary plus meaningful equity in an early stage, fast growing company
• Full health, dental, and vision coverage
• Relocation support for candidates moving to the Austin, TX area
• Flexible time off