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Senior Mechanical Engineer, Drone

Applied Intuition· Hardware
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Sunnyvale$170k - $260kFull-timePosted 1w ago

About the role

Senior Mechanical Engineer on the drone program responsible for designing airframe, structures, and mechanical systems across the full product lifecycle from concept to flight test and production.

Responsibilities

  • Own the mechanical design of our drone platforms, including airframe, fuselage, wings or rotor arms, landing gear, and structural components
  • Make the tradeoffs between weight, strength, aerodynamics, flight time, and payload capacity that determine whether an aircraft flies well
  • Integrate propulsion, batteries, avionics, and payloads into the airframe, including packaging, mounting, cooling, and cable routing
  • Perform structural, thermal, and vibration analysis, and use flight and test data to validate and improve the design
  • Prototype quickly: build, assemble, and iterate on real hardware, and support flight testing and field operations
  • Analyze failures and crashes, drive root cause, and turn lessons into design improvements
  • Own the design, analysis, and validation at the component, assembly, and fully integrated aircraft level
  • Design for manufacturability, repairability, and field serviceability
  • Work cross-functionally with autonomy, avionics, electrical, software, and flight test teams to meet mission requirements

Qualifications

  • BS or MS in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field
  • 10+ years of experience designing hardware and shipping products, ideally for drones, UAS, or aircraft
  • Hands-on experience designing flight vehicles or flight-critical structures (airframes, wings, fuselages, rotor arms, landing gear)
  • Strong understanding of weight, structures, aerodynamic loads, stability, and propulsion integration
  • Experience designing lightweight structures (composites, carbon fiber, aerospace-grade metals)
  • Experience with design for manufacturing across CNC machining, composite layup, sheet metal, and additive manufacturing
  • Proficiency in CAD, SolidWorks preferred
  • Hands-on prototyping and fabrication skills, and comfort building/testing real aircraft

Skills

Required:Mechanical design of airframes and componentsWeight, strength, aerodynamics, and propulsion integrationPropulsion, batteries, avionics packaging and coolingCAD / SolidWorksPrototyping and fabrication
Nice to have:Structural/thermal/vibration analysis
Last updated Oct 25, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Applied Intuition

Building vehicle intelligence | Applied Intuition

Applied Intuition is the vehicle intelligence company with the tools, Vehicle OS, and autonomy stacks for creating safe, AI-powered vehicle experiences.

AIAutonomy stacksSelf-Driving SystemSimulationTesting & ValidationVehicle IntelligenceVehicle OSai-infrastructure-and-development
Company profileWebsite

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