Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Location: Long Beach, CA, US

Experience: Mid Level

Salary: $140,000 - $165,000 per year

You will lead the design and qualification of spaceflight pressure vessels and composite propellant tanks for defense and space customers, taking new products from customer requirements through qualification while supporting the existing product lines already in service.

• Serve as technical lead on new product development for spaceflight pressure vessels and propellant tanks
• Create and own 3D models and drawings in Creo, including GD&T, manufacturing and inspection requirements, and BOMs
• Develop design solutions to customer mission and schedule requirements, working alongside program management, analysis, supply chain, and manufacturing
• Perform sustaining engineering on existing product lines: nonconformance review and disposition, RCCA, and drawing revisions
• Guide material coupon and tank qualification test programs and review the resulting test data
• Act as the direct technical point of contact for the customer on assigned programs

• 5+ years of mechanical design engineering experience with real drawing ownership
• Strong CAD skills (Creo preferred), plus DFMA and GD&T
• Working knowledge of stress analysis and FEA — enough to interpret results and iterate the design

• Pressure vessel, COPV, or propellant tank design
• Composites design and manufacturing, especially filament winding
• Fracture‑critical structure design
• Aerospace structures testing: pressure, static load, vibration, or thermal cycling

Our client designs and build spaceflight pressure vessels and composite propellant tanks for defense and space customers. Our hardware flies on launch vehicles, satellites, and defense platforms, and much of it has been qualified into customer programs that have run for years. We handle the full path in house — design, analysis, filament winding and composite fabrication, and qualification test — which is why our engineers own products rather than pieces of them.

• Base salary $145k–$165k+ DOE
• Medical, dental, vision, and matching 401(k)
• Generous PTO, sick leave, and paid holidays
• Full-lifecycle ownership: you are the technical lead from customer requirements through qualification, and the customer's direct technical point of contact on the program
• Established product lines with ongoing sustaining work alongside new product development, so the pipeline is not tied to a single award

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