{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"bca78d39e3b9e97bf738fdf7","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/bca78d39e3b9e97bf738fdf7","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/bca78d39e3b9e97bf738fdf7","title":"Founding Mechanical Engineer","description":"Who We Are\nFirst 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.\nWe've Built Cutting Edge Systems at Legendary Companies\nOur 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.\nThe Role\nYou 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.\n\nWhat You'll Do\nOwn structural, thermal, and packaging design of our first product from design through first article, qualification, and field deployment\nDesign 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\nArchitect thermal management for large battery systems and power electronics operating unconditioned in coastal and desert climates\nDesign the mechanical interfaces and mechanisms our systems use to serve unmanned vehicles in the field\nStand up the company's mechanical foundation: CAD/PDM, drawing standards, BOM discipline, and the DFM path from unit 1 to unit 50\nRun fabrication vendors (weldments, enclosures, machining) and be in the shop for every build\nDeploy with the hardware: commissioning at field sites is part of the job\nRecruit, and then lead, the mechanical engineers who come after you\nWhat We're Looking For\nBachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or related field\n5+ years designing structures for hardware that shipped to harsh environments (aerospace, maritime, energy, automotive, defense)\nYou 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\nDeep in structures or thermal, with working range across the other and across mechanisms, materials, and manufacturing\nHands-on fabrication fluency: you know what a weldment costs, how it will distort, and which vendor will lie to you\nProficiency in 3D CAD (NX, SolidWorks, or Creo); analysis grounded in hand calcs first, FEA second\nComfortable making high-consequence decisions quickly, without a requirements document or a review board\nCompensation\n$150,000–$200,000 base + founding-team equity sized for the role + benefits. If you're an outlier, we'll pay like it.\nITAR requirement\nTo 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.\n\nFOE 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.\n\nSovereignty is built, not declared — come build it with us.","company":"First Order Effects","rawCompany":"first order effects","city":"Austin","state":"TX","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-08-03T18:58:02.607Z","occupations":[{"code":"17-2141.00","title":"Mechanical Engineers","slug":"mechanical-engineers"},{"code":"17-2199.00","title":"Engineers, All Other","slug":"engineers-all-other"},{"code":"11-9041.00","title":"Architectural and Engineering Managers","slug":"architectural-and-engineering-managers"}],"industries":[{"code":"541330","title":"Engineering Services","slug":"engineering-services"},{"code":"541715","title":"Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology)","slug":"research-and-development-in-the-physical-engineering-and-life-sciences-except-nanotechnology-and-biotechnology"},{"code":"333248","title":"All Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing","slug":"all-other-industrial-machinery-manufacturing"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Founding Mechanical Engineer","description":"Who We Are\nFirst 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.\nWe've Built Cutting Edge Systems at Legendary Companies\nOur 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.\nThe Role\nYou 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.\n\nWhat You'll Do\nOwn structural, thermal, and packaging design of our first product from design through first article, qualification, and field deployment\nDesign 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\nArchitect thermal management for large battery systems and power electronics operating unconditioned in coastal and desert climates\nDesign the mechanical interfaces and mechanisms our systems use to serve unmanned vehicles in the field\nStand up the company's mechanical foundation: CAD/PDM, drawing standards, BOM discipline, and the DFM path from unit 1 to unit 50\nRun fabrication vendors (weldments, enclosures, machining) and be in the shop for every build\nDeploy with the hardware: commissioning at field sites is part of the job\nRecruit, and then lead, the mechanical engineers who come after you\nWhat We're Looking For\nBachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or related field\n5+ years designing structures for hardware that shipped to harsh environments (aerospace, maritime, energy, automotive, defense)\nYou 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\nDeep in structures or thermal, with working range across the other and across mechanisms, materials, and manufacturing\nHands-on fabrication fluency: you know what a weldment costs, how it will distort, and which vendor will lie to you\nProficiency in 3D CAD (NX, SolidWorks, or Creo); analysis grounded in hand calcs first, FEA second\nComfortable making high-consequence decisions quickly, without a requirements document or a review board\nCompensation\n$150,000–$200,000 base + founding-team equity sized for the role + benefits. If you're an outlier, we'll pay like it.\nITAR requirement\nTo 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.\n\nFOE 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.\n\nSovereignty is built, not declared — come build it with us.","datePosted":"2026-08-03T18:58:02.607Z","dateModified":"2026-08-03T18:58:02.607Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"First Order Effects","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Austin","addressRegion":"TX","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"bca78d39e3b9e97bf738fdf7"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/bca78d39e3b9e97bf738fdf7"}}