Structures Design Reliability Engineer Verified today

About the role

Vast is developing Haven-1, the world's first commercial human-rated space station. As Structures Design Reliability Engineer, you will report to the Director of Design Reliability and guide the design, verification, and validation of the station's structures through detailed design, manufacturing, and testing.

You will ensure primary and secondary structures are appropriately designed and function reliably over their intended lifespan by integrating reliability principles into the design process. You will drive Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), guide test plan definition, review verification and validation data, and work with hardware teams to prevent failures before manufacturing.

What you will do

Technical Leadership

• Guide design of primary and secondary structures on a large-scale space station.
• Build Vast's understanding of static and dynamic loads, vibrations, thermal and other environmental considerations to drive design decisions.
• Lead technical reviews providing clear, decisive guidance on mechanical design, analysis, manufacturing drawings, test plans, and concept of operations during milestone reviews and major risk gates.
• Provide critical peer review and approval of hardware designs during design reviews and of acceptance and qualification test campaigns.
• Ensure design processes and design criteria follow requirements for flight, launch, and ground support systems.
• Set standards for acceptance and qualification test completeness for flight systems, ensuring test campaigns are robust and aligned with human-rated reliability.

Design Excellence

• Architect Vast's structures engineering standards, design guides, and review frameworks.
• Develop design criteria, requirements, and verification approaches to support Haven-1 design architecture.
• Make engineering best practices accessible and actionable for teams moving rapidly under ambitious timelines.
• Elevate engineering teams across the organization by bringing experience in design, build cycles, integration, and test.
• Capture lessons learned and strengthen future standards.

Process Ownership

• Own and refine design review templates, reliability checklists, and internal design guides.
• Track design maturity and compliance across the station and vehicle architecture.
• Build tools, frameworks, and automation that empower engineers to explore design trade-offs and risks.

Change and Configuration Management

• Partner with configuration and change management to ensure every update to flight hardware is intentional, reviewed, and fully understood.
• Drive technical trades backed by physics-based engineering rationale.
• Coordinate between Change Management, Risk, and Engineering teams to ensure design revisions drive continuous improvement.
• Partner with the software team to ensure system data, configuration details, and design decisions are well organized and accessible.

Risk Management

• Partner with the Risk management team to identify risk and drive design improvements.
• Quantify risk and failure probability through rigorous engineering analysis.
• Drive FMEA and Fault Tree Analysis across engineering systems.
• Drive best practices for traceability and verification and validation of design revisions.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or related Engineering discipline.
• 6+ years of professional work experience in responsible engineering, design ownership, systems integration, test engineering, or reliability-focused development.

Preferred qualifications

• 10+ years of related professional work experience in responsible engineering, design ownership, systems integration, test engineering, or reliability-focused development.
• Experience in Responsible Engineering, Systems Engineering, Office of the Chief Engineer, or Reliability Engineering roles on complex aerospace systems.
• Hands-on experience designing, assembling, integrating, or testing hardware.
• Background with spacecraft, aircraft, launch vehicles, or other mission-critical or safety-critical systems.
• Familiarity with fracture control, reliability methodologies, or human-rated hardware standards.
• Experience creating engineering standards, review templates, or technical guidance frameworks.
• Strong scripting and data analysis skills (Python, MATLAB, Excel) and familiarity with visualization tools such as Tableau.
• Knowledge of manufacturing processes, materials selection, and hardware qualification pathways.
• Strong systems-level intuition and ability to anticipate and articulate risks early.

Additional requirements

• Willingness to work overtime or weekends to support critical mission milestones.
• Must be a U.S. person as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.62 (U.S. citizen, U.S. national, lawful permanent resident, or asylee or refugee with such status granted) due to access to items subject to U.S. export control.

Compensation and benefits

Base salary: $162,360 to $265,392 USD, depending on experience and demonstrated capability.

Full-time employees receive company equity and comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage; 20+ days vacation for exempt staff (10+ for non-exempt) with annual cash-out option; paid parental leave; disability and life insurance; 401(k) retirement plan; ClassPass credits; mental healthcare through Spring Health; and free snacks, coffee, and dinner with subsidized lunch.