Avionics Mechanical Engineer I Verified today

About Inversion Space

Inversion builds advanced reentry systems to deliver payloads from Low-Earth Orbit to anywhere on Earth in under an hour. Your work supports spacecraft designed to operate through extreme reentry conditions and land with high precision, serving urgent national security and future commercial logistics needs.

What You Will Do

As an Avionics Mechanical Engineer, you will report to the Manager of Arc Vehicle Avionics. You will design, build, and test the mechanical hardware that packages, protects, and integrates avionics systems on Inversion vehicles.

You will develop secondary structures and electromechanical packaging for flight computers, power systems, radios, navigation sensors, remote I/O, harnessing, and other avionics hardware. Your work will include CAD design, drawings, analysis, manufacturing support, assembly, and environmental test execution. This is a hands-on, early-career role where you will work closely with electrical, avionics, production, and vehicle-integration engineers to turn electronics into flight-ready hardware.

Key Responsibilities

• Design avionics enclosures, mounting brackets, trays, panels, sensor mounts, cable-routing features, and secondary structures.
• Support packaging and installation of flight computers, power-distribution hardware, batteries, radios, navigation sensors, cameras, remote I/O, and associated harnessing.
• Produce engineering drawings, CAD models, BOMs, assembly instructions, and release documentation.
• Design for mass, stiffness, thermal performance, vibration, shock, access, manufacturability, serviceability, and vehicle interfaces.
• Work with electrical engineers to define mechanical interfaces for connectors, harness routing, grounding, thermal paths, sensor placement, and board-level packaging.
• Support fabrication, machining, inspection, assembly, and integration of avionics hardware.
• Participate in fit checks, bench tests, vibration tests, thermal tests, and other environmental test activities.
• Coordinate with Production to ensure designs are manufacturable, inspectable, and support the required build schedule.
• Support vehicle integration by maintaining clean interface definitions and resolving mechanical integration issues.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, a related field, or equivalent technical experience.
• Typically 1+ years of internship, academic research, or professional experience developing hardware for aerospace, defense, or similarly demanding applications.
• Proficiency in 3D CAD software such as NX, CATIA, SolidWorks, Creo, or equivalent.
• Familiarity with creating mechanical drawings, assemblies, and bills of materials.
• Working knowledge of GD&T, tolerance stack-up, fasteners, materials, and standard manufacturing processes.
• Familiarity with mechanical design for vibration, shock, thermal environments, and basic structural loading.
• Hands-on experience building, assembling, testing, or troubleshooting mechanical or electromechanical hardware.
• Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience designing enclosures, electronics packaging, test fixtures, brackets, or secondary structures for aerospace, robotics, automotive, defense, or other hardware products.
• Experience with CNC-machined parts, sheet metal, additive manufacturing, composite parts, or related manufacturing processes.
• Familiarity with spacecraft, launch vehicle, or UAV flight phases and operations.
• Demonstrated technical execution through collegiate engineering teams such as Formula SAE, rocket clubs, or robotics design groups.
• Prior internship experience in a fast-paced aerospace or robotics startup environment.

Location and Compensation

This position requires in-office presence at Inversion's headquarters in Playa Vista, California. The California annual base salary for this role is $77,000 to $116,000. Pay is determined by role, level, location, market data, interviews, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, and internal equity.

ITAR Compliance

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.