Senior Mechanical Engineer
Design, prototype, test, and troubleshoot high-performance mechanisms for field-deployed counter-drone hardware. The role requires 10+ years of mechanical engineering experience, deep kinematics and dynamics expertise, strong GD&T skills, and hands-on machining and failure analysis.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Design and solve mechanism problems involving feed systems, actions, drives, latching, timing, cams, linkages, gear trains, springs, ratchets, escapements, and detents.
- Own concepts from kinematic and dynamic analysis through detailed design, prototyping, testing, and working hardware.
- Build, machine, print, fit, assemble, instrument, and cycle prototypes; diagnose failures and determine root causes.
- Analyze friction, backlash, inertia, compliance, wear, thermal growth, contamination, tolerances, forces, timing, and energy budgets.
- Design mechanisms for manufacturability and produce supplier-ready drawings with GD&T.
- Collaborate with electrical, firmware, controls, manufacturing, and test engineers on electromechanical interfaces and instrumented testing.
- Support range and field testing, troubleshoot hardware failures, and incorporate findings into subsequent revisions.
Requirements
- 10+ years of mechanical engineering experience with a track record of mechanism design for hardware deployed in the field.
- Strong mechanism-design intuition and experience with moving assemblies.
- Fluency in kinematics and dynamics, including linkage synthesis, cam design, gear trains, spring and energy-storage design, impact and high-rate loading, and tolerance and clearance analysis.
- Practical knowledge of friction, lubrication, wear, fatigue, backlash, fretting, galling, contamination, thermal effects, materials, and surface treatments.
- Hands-on prototyping and troubleshooting experience with mills, lathes, and mechanical benches.
- Strong GD&T and mechanical drawing skills.
- Sound engineering judgment, direct communication, and collaborative working style.
Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with firearm actions, feed systems, or fire-control mechanisms.
- Experience with high-rate, high-shock, or high-cycle mechanisms in firearms, ammunition handling, automotive powertrain, industrial automation, printing or packaging machinery, aerospace actuation, or similar fields.
- Experience with precision gear trains, harmonic drives, servo-driven gimbals, or turret systems.
- Experience taking mechanisms from prototype through production and working with machine shops or contract manufacturers.
- Experience in a venture-backed hardware startup.
- Multibody simulation experience.
Compensation and Benefits
- Salary: $150,000–$185,000 annually.
- Meaningful early equity.
- Employer-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums; 50% coverage of dependent healthcare premiums.
- Unlimited paid time off.
- Rapid-prototyping laboratory with NVIDIA Jetsons, high-end oscilloscopes, and 3D printers.
Skills
Mechanism Design, Kinematics, Dynamics, Linkage Synthesis, Cam Design, Gear Trains, GD&T, Tolerance Analysis, Multibody Simulation, Prototyping, Machining, Manufacturing, Failure Analysis, Gimbals, Surface Treatments
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