Senior Forward Deployed Engineer Job Los Angeles area,California USA,Engineering

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.

Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

What you’ll do

Deploy forward with aircraft, ground systems, and engineers to real-world test sites and customer environments
Own on-site integration, troubleshooting, and rapid iteration of flight hardware and software
Act as the connective tissue between flight operations, engineering, and customers
Debug avionics, RF, power, software, and mechanical issues in the field under time pressure
Execute flight tests, demos, and exercises with minimal support and high autonomy
Collect ground truth, flight data, and operator feedback and drive it back into the product
Support customer training, mission planning, and operational workflows

What we’re looking for

2+ years working on real systems in the field (aerospace, robotics, defense, autonomy, or hardware startups)
Strong hands-on debugging skills across hardware and software
Comfort working across disciplines: avionics, RF, embedded software, mechanical systems, and ops
Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, high-pressure environments
Strong communication skills with engineers, operators, and customers
Willingness to travel frequently and operate out of test ranges, airfields, and remote locations

Why Icarus

Meaningful equity

Top market salary and bonuses

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Factory in El Segundo

Real ownership, real hardware, real flight

Small team, massive responsibility

High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture

Dream desk setup

Daily lunch

Unlimited celsius

This is not a normal engineering job

We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead

You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster

We expect full extreme ownership. This is a high-trust, no-BS team, and everyone pulls their weight

We are hiring across the stack: mechanical, aerodynamics, RF, GNC, electrical, avionics, power electronics, energy storage, software, and systems

We want builders. No hand-holding. No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. No sitting in meetings all day. Just raw engineering, real hardware, and real flight

You must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits. We move fast. We go to Mojave at 4 am in the morning
. We expect results and an obsession with quality and speed

You will be a core executor of flight hardware, taking systems from concept to reality and driving rapid iteration loops. You will work across avionics, power electronics, energy storage, integration, and production bring-up. If you want real ownership, real hardware, and real flight milestones, this is it

No tourists. No bystanders. Only builders.

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