Principal Mechanical Engineer
South Park Commons is a community and early-stage venture firm that helps talented founders and technologists move from an idea (-1) to a company (0). It runs a no-cost, no-equity residency program for ideation and exploration, and provides $1M to $10M in funding for founders ready to build venture-scale companies.
About South Park Commons
South Park Commons operates a talent-dense community of technical founders, researchers, and domain experts who test ideas, find collaborators, and build conviction on what to build and how to build it. Its offering spans two stages: a six-month Residency with no cost or equity focused on ideation and exploration, and Funding of $1M to $10M for members ready to build venture-scale companies. Beyond capital, SPC provides learning forums on frontier topics (embodied AI, reinforcement learning, energy-efficient computing, AI in biotech), live programming with industry leaders, partner collaboration from a team of former founders and operators, social scaffolding to counter the isolation of early company building, and up to $1M in credits and perks from partners like Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, GCP, and AWS. SPC has spaces in San Francisco, New York, and Bengaluru, and its community has produced companies such as Render, Luma Labs, Pilot, Comun, Anthropic, Unit21, and Profound.
Skills
About the Role
You will serve as a technical leader, mentor, and advisor to others on the mechanical team, leveraging your previous experience in designing and building spacecraft to push boundaries and design industry leading new space satellites for commercial and national security applications. You'll be deeply technical, focusing on solving the most demanding design, analysis, test, reliability, and manufacturing challenges across multiple spacecraft platforms, while also getting hands-on with prototype and production hardware. You'll help define product roadmaps and use your breadth of knowledge to make system level tradeoffs and optimizations. This hybrid role requires onsite work at the San Jose location three days a week.
Requirements
- 12+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in the space industry, with multiple programs through on-orbit operations
- Strong mentorship experience with demonstrated success in developing junior and mid-level engineers and directly or indirectly leading a team of engineers
- Proven track record of optimizing and maturing existing designs and proven approach to clean-sheet development
- Expert technical knowledge of structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, environmental testing (TVAC, vibration)
- Experience with a variety of manufacturing methods and techniques for space applications, including machining, composites, molding, 3D printing, etc
- Mastery of standard tools: CAD (SolidWorks preferred), PLM, ERP, FEA, test hardware and equipment
- Expert-level skills with drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets
- Experience managing external vendors for part development and manufacturing
- Excellent communication, presentation, and coordination skills
- B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
Responsibilities
- Serve as a technical advisor and domain expert, leading the team to optimal designs of spacecraft structures and components
- Identify opportunities and lead efforts to improve performance, reduce mass, lower cost, and improve manufacturability of current spacecraft platforms
- Interface directly with product and business teams to understand market needs and define multi-year roadmaps for mechanical subsystems
- Provide strong, hands-on mentorship to mechanical engineers at all levels, developing their technical skills and systems-level thinking
- Define mechanical team standards and best practices
- Contribute broadly to hiring, onboarding, and training of mechanical engineering talent
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401k retirement plan
- Short & long term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Three weeks paid vacation for new employees
- 12 paid holidays
- Unlimited sick time
- Paid parental leave