Founding Mechanical Engineer at voltairlabs.com (San Francisco, CA)
voltairlabs.com· San Francisco, CA· $100k–$165k·
Role details
Salary
$100k–$165k
Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time
Job description
As a Founding Mechanical Engineer at Voltair, you will own airframe development and reliability testing of an all-weather, autonomous aircraft designed to enable persistent observability of the largest physical infrastructure in the world.
Key Responsibilities
- Airframe Weatherization. Design and implement sealing, gasketing, thermal anti-ice systems, conformal coating, and other environmental protection measures to ensure our robots can fly into rain, snow, and smoke.
- Thermal Management and avionics packaging Collaborate with electrical engineers to define component placement, thermal management, cable routing, and access panels. Balance CG, serviceability and EMI considerations.
- DFM iteration: Refine airframe manufacturing methods for manufacturing at scale. Reduce part count, define tolerances, and work with contract manufacturers.
- Charging Pad Mechanisms: Own the mechanical design of electromechanical systems both on the pad and on the airframe to ensure reliable alignment and capture.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- CAD: Mastery of SolidWorks/Onshape for assembly design
- Analysis & Simulation: Proficiency in FEA and Modal Analysis
- Design for Manufacturing (DFM): Experience optimizing designs for composite layups
- Reliability Engineering: A track record of designing test fixtures and performing reliability testing for electromechanical systems.
Why work at voltairlabs.com
- Early-stage impact: Join a 7-person team (as of 2026) where every hire has outsized influence on product, culture, and strategy.
- Cutting-edge hardware + software: Work on autonomous flight, computer vision, power electronics, and distributed systems – all in one company.
- YC-backed startup: Access to Y Combinator’s network and resources, with a clear path to Series A.
- Mission-driven: Directly contribute to grid resilience, preventing outages, and enabling cleaner energy infrastructure.
- Culture: High-agility environment; founders are hands-on and come from engineering backgrounds (controls systems, power electronics, operations research). Recent LinkedIn posts show a customer-obsessed, problem-solving ethos.
- Location: HQ in Pullman, WA (with Chicago office) – offers a mix of rural/hardware-friendly environment and urban presence. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated, but likely flexible given small team.