Senior Mechanical Engineer - Spacecraft Mission Mechanical Lead

About the role

Muon seeks a Senior Mechanical Engineer to serve as a Mission Mechanical Lead on our Spacecraft Structures & Missions team - the group that tailors Muon's spacecraft platforms to specific customer missions. Starting from our platform building blocks, you'll work with customers and systems engineers to design solutions that meet mission requirements, reusing common components where possible and designing new ones unique to the mission.

You'll independently own the mechanical direction of your missions from requirements definition through installation on the launch vehicle: collaborating directly with the customer to understand requirements, then executing internally - pulling in structural, thermal, and electrical stakeholders at the right times, leading reviews and test campaigns, and mentoring the team's earlier-career engineers along the way.

Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our San Jose location 3x days a week.
Responsibilities

• Independently own the mechanical direction of assigned missions, from requirements definition through installation on the launch vehicle
• Develop a deep understanding of Muon's spacecraft platforms and capabilities, and tailor them to meet mission needs
• Design, build, and test mission-specific components and payloads; create and refine full spacecraft mechanical designs in SolidWorks
• Design and document new, reusable components for inclusion in Muon's common platform
• Work directly with customers and systems engineers to translate mission requirements into robust flight hardware
• Partner with Muon's dedicated structural and thermal analysis groups to define load cases, run analyses, and own mechanical margins
• Lead the mechanical portion of internal and external design reviews
• Lead environmental test campaigns (vibration, TVAC) and write mission-specific documentation and build procedures
• Mentor the team's earlier-career mechanical engineers through design feedback and technical guidance

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, building, and testing high-reliability hardware
• Demonstrated proficiency leading mechanical design for spacecraft or complex electromechanical systems
• Experience technically leading or managing a small team of engineers and/or technicians
• Proficiency in CAD (SolidWorks preferred) for medium-to-large assembly design and management
• Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets
• Extensive documentation capabilities - build procedures, test plans, design trades - with ECO/DCO and PLM discipline
• Experience managing external vendors for part prototyping and development
• Excellent communication, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills
• B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field

Nice-to-have Skills

• Flight heritage - hardware you designed that has successfully operated in space
• Experience optimizing and maturing existing designs, not only clean-sheet development
• Familiarity with satellite payloads and mission-level mechanical integration
• Experience with deployable hardware (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
• Experience with ADCS components: reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers
• Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS)
• Experience with thermal management systems for spacecraft
• Software skills in Python, MATLAB, or similar
• Project management experience: customer reviews, schedules, risk tracking

Salary

The salary range for this role is $173,000 - $193,000 plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.
Other Roles

If this role is not quite what you are looking for, we are looking for talented people across a wide range of roles at Muon Space. See our careers page for a full list including different disciplines, or view some roles similar to this one:

• Senior Mechanical Engineer, Spacecraft Components & Systems
• Senior Mechanical Engineer, Solar & Deployables
• Staff Mechanical Engineer, Spacecraft Design Technical Lead
• Engineering Manager, Mission Mechanical

About Muon Space

Founded in 2021, Muon Space is an end-to-end Space Systems Provider that designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations delivering mission-critical data. Our revolutionary, integrated technology stack enables customers to optimize every dimension of their missions for faster time-to-orbit and superior constellation remote sensing performance. Our state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Silicon Valley is optimized for manufacturing spacecraft and rapid, flexible payload integration at scale. From climate monitoring to national security, Muon Space is dedicated to delivering Earth Intelligence for a safer and more resilient world.
Taking Care of Our Team

At Muon salary is only part of our total compensation package. In addition to salary, full-time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave.

Our mission embraces the entire planet and we believe our team should too. Muon is dedicated to creating a diverse and dynamic company and workforce. We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

Muon is currently registered and able to hire in the following states:
AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IA, ID, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA
ITAR/EAR Requirements

This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.