Mechanical Engineer (Payload Module Jettison Systems)

At Stoke, we believe a thriving space economy will enable a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable future here on Earth. That is why we’re building Nova, our fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Designed for daily flight, Nova tackles the core challenges of space transportation by reducing cost, increasing availability, and improving reliability. By radically lowering launch costs and increasing flight cadence, we’re helping create a truly scalable space industry.

Our team is mission-driven, collaborative, and empowered to take ownership of their work. If you want to work alongside some of the most dedicated and talented people on Earth, we’d love to have you join us.

Description

We're looking for a Mechanical Engineer with rock-solid fundamentals, a love of mechanisms, and a bias for action to own the payload fairing jettison system on Nova. You'll own the system end to end: the separation and clearance analysis, the pneumatics, actuators, and mechanisms that make it work, the integrated tests that prove it, and the operation and reuse of that hardware after flight. You'll carry the current system to flight and help define the next generation of separation and deployment systems for our reusable fairing. If you want one critical system that is yours from analysis to flight, this role is for you.

Responsibilities

• Own the fairing jettison system from requirements definition and analysis through verification, vehicle integration, flight operations, refurbishment, and reuse

• Develop and run jettison dynamics and clearance analyses, including dispersions, to show margin for each mission; derive system requirements and loads, and correlate the analysis to test data

• Design, analyze, procure, qualify, and integrate pneumatics, actuators, and mechanisms

• Create CAD models and manufacturing drawings with proper GD&T

• Work directly with machinists, technicians, and suppliers to build and test your hardware, on schedule and on budget

• Plan and run integrated jettison tests, from development through qualification

• Troubleshoot failures, disposition non-conformances, and drive root cause corrective action

• Lead design reviews and communicate technical decisions clearly

• Run trade studies on separation and deployment architectures for our next-generation reusable fairing, payload adapters, and dispensers

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related technical field

• 5+ years of hands-on engineering experience designing, building, and testing hardware

• Exceptional command of mechanical engineering fundamentals (statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, heat transfer, fluid mechanics)