Mechanical Engineer - Complex Mission Mechanical Lead

About The Role

Muon seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to own delivery of bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload design/integration solutions for complex spacecraft missions, such as those with high agility or high power requirements, supported by domain experts. Ownership starts at the requirements definition phase and continues through launch integration over 10‑15 months per mission.

In this role, you will start with platform building blocks and tailor them to meet requirements, as well as identify and design required new mission‑specific components or new platform components. You will be responsible for making critical architecture decisions that balance performance, cost, and schedule.

The ideal candidate brings proven space hardware experience and a systems mindset—going deep on design and analysis while collaborating across disciplines to deliver high performance solutions. Breadth is essential—you'll have touch points across the mission management, engineering, and production.

This role will be an individual contributor with strong technical leadership responsibilities and will include people management of a small team of mechanical engineers.

Due to the hands‑on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our Mountain View and San Jose locations.

• Spacecraft Ownership & Architecture
  • Serve as the Complex Mission Mechanical Lead for a spacecraft class, owning the mechanical architecture and design direction.
  • Define and maintain the mechanical design envelope, interfaces, and configuration control strategy.
  • Lead spacecraft evolution initiatives to improve performance, reduce mass, lower cost, and enhance manufacturability across the product line.
  • Create and maintain mechanical roadmaps with 1‑year+ horizons, anticipating future mission needs and proactively driving platform improvements.
  • Ensure mechanical systems are designed for scalability—from prototype builds to constellation quantities.
• Customer Engagement
  • Work directly with customers to understand mission requirements and translate capabilities into compelling technical solutions.
  • Contribute mechanical engineering content to proposals, meetings, and reviews, including technical approaches, mass/power budgets, and compliance matrices.
  • Partner with Business Development to identify platform enhancement opportunities driven by customer needs.
• Technical Leadership & Design Optimization
  • Serve as the definitive technical authority and domain expert for your platform’s mechanical systems.
  • Apply extensive space industry experience and flight heritage to optimize and mature mechanical designs.
  • Use lessons learned from builds, tests, and on‑orbit operations to identify design improvements and risk reduction opportunities across the platform.
• Best Practices & Standards Definition
  • Define, document, and champion mechanical engineering best practices, design standards, and guidelines that scale across the organization.
  • Establish and improve processes for design reviews, documentation, and engineering rigor.
  • Refine testing protocols to ensure adequate coverage while minimizing effort.
• Mentorship & Team Development
  • Act as a force multiplier by providing strong, hands‑on mentorship to mechanical engineers at all levels, developing their technical skills and systems‑level thinking.
  • Lead rigorous design reviews (PDR, CDR, MRR), providing constructive feedback that elevates the quality of engineering work across the team.
  • Guide and coach team members on first‑principles problem solving and cross‑domain execution.
  • Hire, onboard, and manage a small team of mechanical engineers, if needed.
• First‑Principles Design & Analysis
  • Apply first‑principles engineering to solve complex mechanical design challenges.
  • Lead the design, analysis, and optimization of spacecraft structures, mechanisms, and mechanical subsystems.
  • Perform and/or manage stress, dynamic, and thermal analyses, including joint design, stiffness analyses, and mass optimization.
  • Work with structural and thermal analysts to iterate and refine designs for performance and manufacturability.
  • Make economically sound make‑vs‑buy decisions, balancing rapid capability demonstration with constellation scale‑up…