Manufacturing Engineer; Structures
Listed on 2026-05-25
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Engineering
Manufacturing Engineer, Aerospace / Aviation / Avionics, Mechanical Engineer, Quality Engineering
About This Role
As a Structures Manufacturing Engineer at Varda, you will have the opportunity to utilize your experience to scale manufacturing from a few bespoke vehicles to many consistent, concurrent builds. This role would support structural subassembly production, including primary airframe, tanks, and bonded structures. The Structures ME owns build processes for structural hardware from work instruction development through production floor implementation.
Manufacturing Engineers will be a vital part in increase Varda's build cadence working directly with design engineers and technicians for a broad array of processes (structures, thermal protection systems, propulsion, and avionics components) required to manufacture our vehicles. The focus of the job is to implement incremental improvement for every vehicle Varda produces.
Responsibilities- Provide technical direction to improve build processes to scale and hit increase vehicle cadence
- Collaborate with other engineers and technicians to solve large-scale production challenges
- Refine floor layouts, capacity models, and product flow analysis
- Develop and implement standardized processes for vehicle integration
- Assess cost of increasing work cell capabilities and proposing plans to increase internal capabilities
- Proactively coordinate with technicians team and supply chain to prevent schedule delays
- Review work instructions to make change recommendations when required and identify tooling/training gaps
- Identify and resolve non-conformance issues - implement root cause corrective actions
- B.S. degree in mechanical, manufacturing, or aerospace engineering
- 1-4+ years of manufacturing experience
- Teamwork, communication (verbal and written), and problem solving in a collaborative environment
- Proven experience working on complex technical programs, preferably within aerospace or related industries
- Strong first principles thinking
- Hands‑on experience building complex vehicles
- Must be physically able to regularly lift 25 lbs.
- Must be comfortable bending, stooping, and standing
- Hands‑on position may require standing and working directly with hardware on the floor
- Knowledge of aerospace vehicle systems
- Experience with project management of the full lifecycle of a project
- Experience transitioning complex assemblies from development to production, including developing the factory systems and floor layouts to make that possible
- Experience with aerospace hardware development practices (e.g., qualification testing practices, cleanliness, ESD, grounding, etc.)
- Experience across structures, propulsion, materials/thermal protection systems, and/or avionics production
- Prior work in a technical role for a launch vehicle or satellite development effort
- Experience with tooling design and analysis using 3D CAD software
- Experience using factory layout design tools (e.g., Sketch Up, Autodesk, Draw.io, etc.)
- Salary Range:
- Eng I: $X-X
- Eng II: $X-X
- Senior: $X-X
- This role is on-site in El Segundo, CA
- Leveling and base salary is determined by job-related skills, education level, experience level, and job performance
- You will be eligible for incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards
Varda, like all employers, must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Additionally, our employees are exposed to and have access to certain export‑controlled items. At present, some of our technology to which employees have access requires a license to be exported to individuals other than "U.S. Persons" as defined in U.S. export regulations.
Because our employees are provided access to export‑controlled items, our current policy is to only hire "U.S. persons" who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license.
- Exciting team of professionals at the top of their field working by your side
- Equity in a fully funded space startup with potential for significant growth (interns excluded)
- 401(k) matching (interns excluded)
- Unlimited PTO (interns excluded)
- Health insurance, including Vision and Dental
- Lunch and snacks provided on site every…
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