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K2 Space is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, backed by $450M in funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, T. Rowe Price, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company has signed $500M in contracts across commercial and US government customers and is mass-producing advanced satellite platforms for missions from low Earth orbit to deep space.
You will own the mechanical design and development of K2's plasma propulsion system—the highest-powered electric propulsion system ever flown. This role sits at the center of a small multidisciplinary engineering team responsible for all mechanical structures, mechanisms, and hardware integration for the propulsion subsystem.
In your first six months, you will define product requirements, create initial design concepts and trade studies, perform preliminary and detailed structural/mechanical analysis, define development test campaigns, and produce development hardware. Over your first year, you will validate designs through prototype iterations and build and qualify flight-ready hardware. Within two years, your hardware will fly in space while you directly support production integration and on-orbit operations.
Key responsibilities include: owning mechanical design of propulsion modules, critical thruster components, propellant management systems, avionics enclosures, secondary structures, and potentially tank development; validating designs through the full lifecycle from concept to production and flight; generating 3D CAD models, fully dimensioned drawings, and interface control documents; performing analysis on test data and making critical go/no-go decisions on hardware performance; developing and executing component and system-level test plans; and managing key propulsion vendors and suppliers through hardware delivery.
This is a hands-on role with direct ownership of critical flight hardware for a Series C space startup executing multiple launches through 2026–2027.
