Mechanical Design & Prototyping Engineer

Haast Autonomous is building an autonomous aircraft network for time-sensitive medical logistics. We’re developing long-range VTOL aircraft, autonomy software, and the operational foundation needed to move critical payloads between hospitals, labs, and healthcare facilities on-demand faster and more reliably.

We’re early, small, and moving quickly. Joining now means you’ll have a direct role in shaping the foundation of Haast — our culture, engineering process, testing discipline, partner relationships, and the path from prototype to a real medical logistics network.

We’re looking for high-agency people who want ownership, urgency, and system-level impact from day one.

As a Mechanical Design & Prototyping Engineer at Haast, you’ll help design and build the physical aircraft systems that make our autonomous aircraft network possible, with a strong emphasis on tailoring solutions to customer needs and prototyping user-focused experiences.

You’ll work across CAD, structures, prototyping, aircraft packaging, fixtures, payload integration, manufacturing, and flight‑test support. This is a hands‑on role focused on customer‑first design, including design for manufacturing and usability. We’re looking for someone who can design a part, build it, install it, watch it fail, improve it, and get it ready for the next test—always with the end user and customer requirements in mind.

• Design and develop airframes, structures, mechanisms, mounts, fixtures, and prototype hardware with a focus on user experience and customer requirements.
• Own CAD for key airframe and mechanical systems, ensuring designs are manufacturable and tailored to customer use cases.
• Design payload bays, landing gear, motor mounts, avionics mounts, access panels, covers, brackets, internal structure, and payload compartments optimized for user accessibility and operational efficiency.
• Build prototypes using 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, hand tools, and other rapid fabrication methods, continuously iterating based on user testing and feedback.
• Create detailed part drawings, assembly documentation, BOMs, and revision history focused on clarity and ease of use for manufacturing and customer support.
• Work with avionics and controls engineers to package sensors, wiring, batteries, antennas, and payload interfaces that support real‑world use scenarios.
• Improve the aircraft for buildability, repairability, serviceability, usability, and repeatability.
• Support aircraft assembly, pre‑flight inspections, field repairs, post‑test teardown, and customer‑driven design changes.
• Track mass properties, center of gravity, structural changes, manufacturing constraints, and customer impact.
• Help move Haast from one‑off prototypes toward aircraft hardware that can support a real autonomous medical logistics network, with customer experience at the core.

• Strong CAD skills in Solid Works, Fusion 360, Onshape, CATIA, NX, or similar.
• Experience building real hardware and iterating with customer feedback, not just designing it.
• Good mechanical intuition around structures, load paths, fasteners, adhesives, vibration, packaging, manufacturability, and usability.
• Comfortable working with 3D printing, composites, foam, carbon fiber, basic shop tools, and rapid prototyping in service of user‑centered solutions.
• Ability to move quickly without being sloppy, while maintaining customer‑focused quality.
• Strong ownership and initiative. You don’t wait around for perfect requirements and proactively engage with user‑related challenges.
• Good documentation habits so the team can actually track what changed and how it addresses customer needs.
• Excitement to work in a startup environment where the aircraft, process, and company are all being built at the same time, centered on customer‑driven design.

• Experience with UAVs, RC aircraft, fixed‑wing aircraft, VTOL aircraft, robotics, motorsports, or aerospace hardware.
• Composite layup, vacuum bagging, mold design, or foam‑core construction experience.
• Experience with lightweight aircraft structures, spars, ribs, motor mounts, control surfaces, or landing gear.
• Familiarity with…