Job Description
About The Role
You'll be our first mechanical engineer for Dispatch’s reusable reentry vehicles designed for mass manufacturing and the person responsible for turning a heat shield and avionics stack into a flying spacecraft. This is a founding role - you'll own the structural design, mechanisms, and integration of our reentry vehicle from CAD to qualification testing to launch.
At our stage, this means you're doing the analysis and the hands-on build. You'll work directly with both founders on a daily basis. Both founders are ex-Astranis - Andrew led the avionics team, Payton was chief engineer on their next-gen satellite line.
Responsibilities
- Design the primary vehicle structure (load paths, interfaces, payload volume)
- Own mechanical systems: deployment mechanisms, recovery/parachute systems, payload integration hardware
- Run structural analysis (FEA) for launch and reentry load environments
- Produce engineering drawings with GD&T for fabricated and machined parts
- Build and test prototype hardware
- Support environmental qualification testing (vibration, thermal vacuum)
Required Qualifications
- 3+ years designing and building flight hardware (spacecraft, launch vehicles, hypersonics, or missiles)
- Strong mechanical design skills: structures, mechanisms, packaging in constrained volumes
- Proficiency in CAD (SOLIDWORKS or similar) and FEA tools (Femap or similar)
- Hands-on prototyping experience - you've machined, assembled, and tested your own designs
- Comfortable working across disciplines at an early-stage company
Nice to Have
- Experience with reentry vehicles, capsule structures, or high-load environments
- Recovery system design (parachutes, airbags, flotation)
- Familiarity with rideshare mechanical interface standards (ESPA, Exolaunch deployers)
- Thermal protection system integration experience
Interview Process
- 15-30 min phone intro with CEO
- 1 Hour phone deep dive with CTO
- 1 Hour in person with CEO
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Job Details
- Category
- Mechanical
- Employment Type
- Full Time
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Posted
- Compensation
- $100,000 - $160,000 per year
About Dispatch
Dispatch is building refurbishable reentry vehicles that host and return payloads for companies making ultra-high-value materials (semiconductors, biotech, and pharma) that can only be manufactured in space. Right now, these companies have no practical way to manufacture and get their products back to Earth. We solve this bottleneck. We just returned from the Mojave Desert testing our first full-scale reentry heat shield designed to protect the satellite as it returns from space at Mach 20+, built in an apartment for 100x cheaper than competitors. To test, we held it behind a rocket engine to simulate the forces of atmospheric reentry. IT WORKED! Watch here - https://youtu.be/dhlQmnIoptg To scale, we anchor permanent infrastructure in orbit - building high power Autonomous Space Stations designed from day one for "lights-out" manufacturing serviced by the reentry vehicles.
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