Lead Mechanical Engineer - Castelion

About Castelion

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We’re designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Lead Mechanical Engineer

Castelion is seeking a high output Mechanical Engineering leader with a full stack, Responsible Engineer mindset and experience shipping flight hardware. This person will be responsible for critical flight structures and mechanism design and build efforts for Castelion’s hypersonic vehicles and will serve as a mentor and reference for a growing team of young, hungry Mechanical Engineers. The Lead Mechanical Engineer will work closely with Castelion’s engineering leadership to ensure mission-critical hardware is delivered on time and with appropriate performance to meet the company’s technical goals. A successful candidate will have significant experience delivering high performance, mass-constrained hardware in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Deliver Mission Critical Flight Structures and Mechanisms. Responsible for the design, build, and integration of key hypersonic test vehicle. You design, build, test and deliver mission critical systems in weeks. Take responsibility for custom composite tanks, separation mechanisms, actuators, and control surfaces. Use fundamentals of statics, modal, and dynamics for load estimation and analysis then prove your engineering in flight.

• Lead Growing Team in High Cadence Test Campaigns and Design Iteration Cycles. Deliver prototype design cycles for subsystems every four weeks and drive company design reviews and system architecture reviews for your vehicle systems. Capture value from testing and prototypes for rapid design iteration.

• Implement and Manage Engineering Standards. Develop and improve Castelion’s modeling, hardware management, and naming Engineering Standards and quality assurance efforts. Write travelers and build notes for technicians then work side by side to run through them during builds.

Basic Qualifications

• Educational Background

  Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with 8+ years of professional ME experience.

  
  

• Technical Skills

  This role requires broad mechanical domain knowledge, including detailed CAD design of complex parts, tolerance stack up analysis, thermal analysis, structural analysis, and deign-to-cost.

  
  

• Experience Designing Flight Parts. Demonstrated ability to design and build elegant, low complexity parts that consider mass, cost, and commonality to ensure high manufacturability at scale. Attention to design details, part numbers, coatings, and finishes. Experience with composite structure design and analysis.

• Full Cycle Development Ownership. Experience bringing hardware designs from initial concept to implementation, production, and successful operations. Ability to maximize speed and value from vendors for company goals during vendor visits or joint development efforts.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Creative Problem-Solving Approach. Proven desire and ability to question assumptions and develop creative solutions to engineering problems and successfully implement the breakthrough solutions.

• Demonstrated Leadership and Recruitment Capabilities. Ability to attract, hire, and retain top engineering talent. Experience coaching and developing talented teams to achieve successful outcomes on rapid timelines.

All employees are granted long-term stock incentives as part of their employment as Castelion. All employees receive access to comprehensive medial, vision, and dental insurance, and the company offers three weeks of paid time off per year.

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion’s mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company’s technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

ITAR Requirements:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.