Founding Mechanical Engineer

Who We Are First Order Effects (FOE) is building America's Infrastructure Prime for the robotic era. Autonomous ships, drones, and robots are rewriting how the world moves, fights, and builds - but none of them work without infrastructure to power them, connect them, and launch and recover them. That's what we build. We've Built Cutting Edge Systems at Legendary Companies Our team comes from SpaceX, Anduril, Saronic, Lockheed Skunk Works, Forterra, and Fuse Energy. Before founding FOE, we built satellite ground stations that closed a national comms gap in days, deployed multi-megawatt power systems at commercial speed, and shipped autonomous surface vessels into Navy fleet production. We've built infrastructure at lightspeed before - now we're applying that playbook to an entire company. The Role You will lead mechanical engineering efforts and be the owner of the physical machine. Our first product is a ruggedized, containerized system that must survive crane drops, salt fog, desert heat, and years of field abuse while protecting high-power electronics, batteries, and compute. Then, it must be trucked, shipped, or airlifted to the next site to do it again. Today, no one on the team owns that problem. In 90 days, your decisions will be welded into every unit we ever build. This is a founding role: you set the company's mechanical engineering DNA, you build the first article with your own hands, and you hire and lead the mechanical team that follows. What You'll Do Own structural, thermal, and packaging design of our first product from design through first article, qualification, and field deployment Design for the real world: ISO container standards, transport loads (truck, rail, aircraft, ship deck), IP-rated ingress protection, corrosion in marine environments, MIL-STD-810-class qualification Architect thermal management for large battery systems and power electronics operating unconditioned in coastal and desert climates Design the mechanical interfaces and mechanisms our systems use to serve unmanned vehicles in the field Stand up the company's mechanical foundation: CAD/PDM, drawing standards, BOM discipline, and the DFM path from unit 1 to unit 50 Run fabrication vendors (weldments, enclosures, machining) and be in the shop for every build Deploy with the hardware: commissioning at field sites is part of the job Recruit, and then lead, the mechanical engineers who come after you What We're Looking For Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or related field 5+ years designing structures for hardware that shipped to harsh environments (aerospace, maritime, energy, automotive, defense) You were the responsible engineer for something real: you owned it from concept through fabrication, test, and the field, and you can walk us through every decision Deep in structures or thermal, with working range across the other and across mechanisms, materials, and manufacturing Hands-on fabrication fluency: you know what a weldment costs, how it will distort, and which vendor will lie to you Proficiency in 3D CAD (NX, SolidWorks, or Creo); analysis grounded in hand calcs first, FEA second Comfortable making high-consequence decisions quickly, without a requirements document or a review board Compensation $150,000–$200,000 base + founding-team equity sized for the role + benefits. If you're an outlier, we'll pay like it. ITAR requirement To conform to U.S. Government export regulations (ITAR/EAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). Candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance; active clearance not required. FOE is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with FOE is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status. Sovereignty is built, not declared — come build it with us.