Staff Mechanical Engineer

CHAOS Industries is a defense and aerospace company developing products powered by Coherent Distributed Networks for military and commercial applications. The company is seeking a hands-on Staff Mechanical Design Engineer to lead the design and integration of air-launched and ground-launched aerospace vehicles and associated hardware from concept development through flight testing and production support.

Responsibilities:

• Perform hands-on mechanical design and integration of flight-vehicle structures and mechanical hardware, including control surfaces, payload and avionics hardware, mechanisms, enclosures, and related support equipment
• Own the mechanical design and integration of defined subsystems, product areas, or major assemblies
• Perform trade studies and recommend path forward
• Develop and maintain 3D CAD models, assemblies, detailed drawings, assembly and installation documentation, and interface control documents (ICDs)
• Develop mechanical designs subject to structural, thermal, environmental, manufacturability, installation, and operational requirements
• Perform first-order structural and thermal analyses, hand calculations, requirements analysis, and design verification activities
• Lead design review on owned design
• Work collaboratively with mechanical, electrical, electrical harness, RF, power, manufacturing, systems engineering, customers, suppliers, and platform providers to resolve integration challenges
• Support system integration, qualification, and flight testing, including fit-check, installation, alignment, and troubleshooting
• Support prototype fabrication, assembly, transition to production, configuration control, fielding, and sustainment of deployed systems
• Mentor junior engineers

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline
• 7+ years of progressively responsible experience in mechanical design and integration of airframes, flight vehicles, structural assemblies, or related aerospace hardware
• Demonstrated experience designing airframes, control surfaces, and structural assemblies
• Strong proficiency with mechanical CAD tools (SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, or equivalent), including production-ready drawings with GD&T, tolerance analysis, and configuration-controlled documentation
• Strong understanding of structural load paths, joints, fasteners, inserts, bearings, hinges, and bonded joints
• Experience designing or integrating metallic or composite structures subject to vibration, shock, thermal, aerodynamic, and other environmental requirements, including structural analysis using hand calculations and/or FEA
• Experience applying military specifications and applicable aerospace, defense, and airworthiness standards
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance
• Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field
• Experience with composite materials, bonded joints, and composite manufacturing processes
• Experience with advanced structural analysis methods (fatigue, damage tolerance, fracture mechanics, buckling, aeroelasticity) using commercial FEA/multiphysics tools (ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS, COMSOL, or similar)
• Experience with airframe manufacturing processes, including machining, sheet metal, forming, welding, additive manufacturing, or assembly
• Experience supporting structural or flight testing, including instrumentation, strain-gage testing, environmental qualification, or flight-test range operations
• Experience with deployment, release, or separation mechanisms for air- or ground-launched vehicles
• Experience integrating avionics, sensors, payloads, propulsion systems, or other mission equipment into flight vehicles
• Experience with wire-harness routing and connector selection and integration in space-constrained or separation-critical assemblies