Mechanisms Engineer - Payloads

BS/BEng in Mechanical, Aerospace, Mechatronics, or related engineering discipline

Strong fundamentals in structures, heat transfer, fluids, and dynamics

Hands-on experience designing, integrating, testing, and troubleshooting electromechanical hardware

Experience integrating electromechanical actuators, sensors, thermal control hardware and/or fluid control hardware

Experience using CAD (NX preferred) and FEA (Ansys, Nastran)

Exposure to aerospace environmental testing (vibration, TVAC, EMI/EMC)

Salary Range:

Engineer I: $104,000.00 - $130,000.00/per year

Engineer II: $114,000.00 - $145,000.00/per year

This role is on-site

in El Segundo, CA

Leveling and base salary is determined by job-related skills, education level, experience level, and job performance

As a Mechanisms Engineer on Varda’s Payload team, you will develop electromechanical flight hardware that operates in orbit, endures hypersonic reentry, and returns to Earth for inspection and iteration.

You will take full-stack responsibility for payloads across both pharmaceutical manufacturing and hypersonic reentry testbed missions—delivering flight hardware from concept through build, test, launch, and recovery.

You’ll collaborate closely with internal specialists and external partners, translate engineering requirements into flight-ready designs, and perform hands-on integration and testing to deliver hardware that flies in months, not years.

This role is ideal for engineers with strong mechanical fundamentals who want to grow their breadth across thermal, fluids, avionics, software, and integration while shipping real hardware to space and back.

Own payload hardware from concept through design, integration, launch, reentry, and recovery

Design mechanisms, structures, thermal/fluid interfaces, and electromechanical assemblies