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About the job

Senior Mechanical Engineer, UAV San Diego, CA

Mechanical Engineering

In office

Full-time

Firestorm is seeking a highly skilled Senior Mechanical Engineer, UAV to join our innovative engineering team in developing next-generation UAV systems. You will be responsible for the design, structural analysis, and build efforts of critical flight structures and mechanisms within our product line. You will work closely with a dynamic and fast-paced team of engineers and leadership to ensure mission-critical hardware meets stringent technical, schedule, and performance requirements.

In this role, you will play a pivotal role in developing mechanical components and subsystems that satisfy demanding criteria for performance, manufacturability, and cost. Your expertise will bridge advanced aerospace technology and practical engineering as you collaborate cross-functionally with electrical, manufacturing, and flight-test teams to ensure seamless integration of mechanical and electromechanical systems.

You will have proven experience delivering high-performance, mass-optimized hardware in rapid development environments, with a strong foundation in both mechanical design and structural analysis. Proficiency in 3D CAD, first-order hand calculations, and higher order analysis methods will be key to driving innovative solutions that enhance our UAV platform capabilities. As an individual contributor, you will directly influence the technical direction of your designs and help shape engineering best practices across projects. You will be engaged in all phases of the development lifecycle, from early concepts and prototyping through rigorous testing and production, in a fast-moving, high-impact setting.

What You’ll Do

Support mechanical design and structural analysis efforts for key UAV subsystems across the entire product lifecycle: concept, prototyping, testing, production, and field support.

Develop innovative, manufacturable mechanical designs optimized for UAV flight performance under varying operational conditions, ensuring structural, thermal, and functional requirements are met through rigorous analysis and validation.

Analyze initial aerostructures designs against preliminary mass properties targets and strength and stiffness requirements.

Create and maintain high-quality 3D CAD models, detailed engineering drawings, and manufacturing documentation using SolidWorks, emphasizing GD&T principles to ensure precision and manufacturability.

Validate and optimize designs using a combination of hand calculations, finite element analysis (FEA), and physical testing.

Drive high-cadence iterative design and analysis cycles, supporting rapid prototyping and cross-functional design reviews to incorporate test feedback promptly and continuously improve hardware through agile development processes.

Collaborate cross-functionally with electrical engineers, flight-test engineers, and manufacturing teams to integrate complex mechanical and electromechanical systems, including servos, pumps, sensors, cameras, PCBAs, wiring harnesses, and connectors.

Support technical reviews and contribute to design and analysis decisions, ensuring robust engineering practices and adherence to program requirements.

Support rapid prototyping efforts with hands-on experience building functional prototypes in a shop environment, iterating designs based on real-world results and test data.

Troubleshoot mechanical and electromechanical issues through root cause analysis and implement effective corrective actions.

Contribute to configuration management and documentation control, maintaining clear versioning of CAD files, assemblies, and design revisions.

Build and maintain engineering rigor by contributing to the development of company-wide best practices, including CAD standards, documentation protocols, and hardware management processes. Write detailed build documentation and collaborate hands-on with technicians during hardware integration and assembly.

Support Design for Manufacturability (DFM) efforts, working closely with internal and external manufacturing teams to refine parts and processes—including additive manufacturing, CNC machining, sheet metal, injection molding, and composite tooling and fixturing.

Leverage additive manufacturing and traditional fabrication methods to produce high-performance UAV components.

Perform other duties as directed

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline.

'U.S. Person' as defined by 22 CFR § 120.62 required due to ITAR regulations , which includes U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (Green Card holders), or protected individuals under asylee or refugee status

5+ years of mechanical design experience, working directly with aircraft design.

Minimum 1 year of hands-on experience in structural analysis.

Strong foundation in mechanical engineering fundamentals; structures, fluid systems, thermal management, and mechanisms.

Hands-on design engineering experience, with proven application of design-for-manufacturability (DFM) principles.

Experience analyzing primary and secondary aircraft structures using industry-standard tools and methods.

Demonstrated ability to perform structural modeling and analysis of mechanical components and assemblies.

Proficiency in first-order structural analysis and hand calculations, including free body diagrams, statics, and mechanics of materials.

Experience in SolidWorks, including surfacing, top-down design, and advanced modeling techniques, plus strong knowledge of GD&T principles.

Experience integrating mechanical designs with electrical systems, including PCBAs, wiring harnesses, and electromechanical components such as servos and sensors.

Direct application of DFM and designing for additive, traditional, and composite manufacturing methods, including tooling and fixturing for composite assemblies.

Preferred Qualifications

7+ years’ of professional mechanical design experience, working directly with aircraft design, and analysis

3+ of hands-on experience in structural analysis.

Hands-on experience with UAV or aerospace flight structures, including knowledge of rotary and fixed-wing platforms.

Proven ability to develop and execute mission-level simulations or analysis tools using MATLAB, Simulink, or similar environments

Background supporting the full hardware development lifecycle, including design, prototyping, testing, and production

Demonstrated skill in correlating analytical results with physical test data and applying findings to improve design performance

Familiarity with configuration management, version control practices for CAD, and engineering documentation control

Familiarity with designing injection-molded components or polymer-based additive manufacturing techniques.

Who We Are

At Firestorm, we are building the future of expeditionary defense manufacturing and autonomous systems. Modern conflict has exposed a fundamental problem: the systems needed most by operators are often too expensive, too slow to produce, and too difficult to sustain at scale. Firestorm ex