SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 150,000 - 180,000 / annual
Cowboy Space Corp., founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (Robinhood co-founder) and backed by leading investors, is building space infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. The company operates satellites in Low Earth Orbit to collect sunlight and enable new capabilities—from powering on-orbit compute to transmitting energy via infrared lasers and delivering secure, high-bandwidth optical data.
As a Mechanisms Engineer, you will own a critical vehicle mechanism subsystem from concept through flight qualification and operational deployment. Depending on team priorities and your background, your assignment will focus on separation systems, landing gear, aero control surfaces, or electromechanical actuation. This is a hands-on role at the center of vehicle hardware development, working closely with propulsion, structures, avionics, guidance/navigation/control (GNC), and launch operations teams to design integrated systems, build hardware, and validate through rigorous testing.
Key responsibilities include owning your mechanism subsystem across the full lifecycle—concept, design, analysis, test, and flight. You will drive structural and kinematic design for minimum mass while meeting strength, stiffness, fatigue, and operational-life requirements across ascent, entry, landing, and reuse environments. You'll balance performance, manufacturability, cost, and schedule in every design decision. Analysis work spans hand calculations, finite element analysis (FEA), and tolerance stack-ups, with validation through test and flight data. You will define and execute qualification and acceptance test campaigns, author procedures and acceptance criteria, and manage anomaly dispositions.
Additional responsibilities include developing and maintaining engineering drawings, models, and release documentation; working directly on the factory floor with manufacturing to iterate quickly and resolve build issues in real time; troubleshooting hardware anomalies and performing root cause analysis; and supporting launch operations, post-flight inspection, and refurbishment planning.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field; 5+ years of experience designing mechanisms or mechanical systems for flight vehicles or high-performance hardware; experience taking hardware from concept through build, integration, and test; strong fundamentals in structural mechanics, kinematics, materials, and manufacturing processes; proficiency with CAD tools (NX, SolidWorks, CATIA, or Creo) and ASME Y14.5 GD&T standards; proficiency with FEA tools (ANSYS, Nastran, or Abaqus); and U.S. citizenship or permanent residency (ITAR requirement).
Preferred qualifications include 10+ years of flight hardware design experience, direct experience with separation systems, landing gear, aero control surfaces, or flight electromechanical actuators, experience with pyrotechnic or low-shock separation devices, hands-on prototyping and machining experience, familiarity with reusable vehicle design, and experience at a fast-moving, hardware-focused startup or early-stage program.
