Early Career R&D Mechanical Engineer - Firing & Embedded Systems, Onsite

What Your Job Will Be Like

Are you passionate about your work and want to utilize state‑of‑the‑art facilities to explore solutions? If so, you could be one of the highly motivated Mechanical Engineers we seek.

The Firing & Embedded Systems group (7620) has a portfolio that covers diverse opportunities across Sandia’s Nuclear Deterrence mission and various Strategic Partnership Programs supporting work across the U.S. government.

We seek to fill multiple positions in our technical staff for designing, developing, testing, qualifying, and monitoring firing subsystems and other high‑consequence embedded systems. Our systems are used every day in U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force nuclear weapons and other national security programs.

• Collaborate on multidisciplinary teams, providing ownership and direction for mechanical designs.
• Coordinate with customers, production agencies, and stakeholders to support design, testing, development, qualification, and production activities.
• Analyze performance against requirements, build prototypes, and refine designs.
• Perform modeling and simulation of design performance using tools such as PTC Creo, SOLIDWORKS, ANSYS, and MATLAB/Simulink.
• Communicate technical information and project status effectively to team members, customers, and management.
• Utilize tools and software to perform configuration management and issue engineering authorizations.

Travel to partner and customer locations as required (generally less than 5 days per month).

Applicants chosen for an interview will be asked to provide an overview briefing of an example that illustrates relevant design experience.

Applicants on this requisition may be interviewed by multiple organizations at Sandia National Laboratories.

Due to the nature of the work, the selected applicant must be able to work onsite.

$102,400 – $199,700

• A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline, or an equivalent combination of directly relevant education and engineering or scientific experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform independent research and development.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q clearance.
• Ability to obtain and maintain Sigma 15 access.

• Graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering or a highly related field where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).
• Experience with mechanical engineering and product realization in the NNSA complex.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, ability to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience in one or more of the following areas: mechanical design, environmental (e.g., climatic, vibration, mechanical shock) testing, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) principles and application, mechanical inspection and measurement techniques, electronics packaging design, structural analysis, thermal analysis, root cause analysis, statistical data analysis, design-for-manufacturing.
• Experience working in Nuclear Deterrence mission spaces including design, development, production, or surveillance.
• Experience working in a production or manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated attention to detail.
• Ability to produce high‑quality, appropriately rigorous engineering work products with minimal rework.
• Experience applying structured, data‑driven problem‑solving (root cause, corrective actions, lessons learned/continuous improvement).
• Ability to exercise sound technical judgment and systems thinking; anticipates interface/downstream impacts; knows when to escalate vs. execute independently.
• Ability to plan and prioritize work based on mission impact and risk; adapts to changing constraints and information.
• An active DOE Q‑level security clearance; or other equivalent active security clearance such as DOD Top Secret with CNWDI.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status and any other protected class under state or federal law.