Mechanical Engineer - Airframes & Mechanisms

The posting, as Askaridefense wrote it

About Askari Defense
Modern warfare is dictated by robotics. Autonomous bombing drones and robotic ground systems are reshaping every battlefield on Earth. Any nation that cannot stop them loses.
Askari develops high-performance, fully-autonomous kinetic intercept systems that counter unmanned aerial and robotic threats in the world's most demanding operational environments. We build deployable systems for real-world constraints, urgent missions, and operators who cannot wait years for capability, and are continuously evolving our systems because the robotic threat evolves daily.
We are a tight team of top engineers and scientists from Skydio, Hermeus, Near Earth Autonomy, Area-I/Anduril, Raytheon, Sandia National Laboratories, and GTRI. We work directly with elite end-users, turning emerging battlefield requirements into rugged, scalable, mission-ready defenses.
Come build alongside elite engineers on a generational mission to defend the Western world. Candidly, we hold ourselves to an exceptionally high bar: the work is demanding, the pace is intense, and the mission requires people willing to go all in. For the right person, it will be more rewarding than any previous job. Askari is a place for builders serious about mastery, ownership, exponential growth, and delivering capability when it matters most.
As warfare becomes increasingly robotic, distributed, and fast-moving, the defense industrial base needs a new model: Askari is defining that model.
If protecting humanity from the coming age of robotic warfare is the mission you have been waiting for, this is where you do it.

About the role
As a Mechanical Engineer for Airframes and Mechanisms , you will own the mechanical architecture, design, build, and flight validation of new airframes and mechanical systems for our high-performance UAS intercept platforms.
You will turn evolving mission requirements and vehicle concepts into real hardware: compact mechanisms, structural load paths, subsystem packaging, mechanical interfaces, fixtures, and manufacturable airframes that survive field handling, vibration, launch, flight loads, and repeated iteration.
This role is for an incredibly first-principles engineer who is equal parts mechanisms designer and hands-on builder. You move quickly across the full loop, from trade study to design, build, test, and validation, and you upgrade your first-principles models the moment the data demands more fidelity.
You make hard structural and packaging trades, create elegant solutions under severe constraints, and personally build and test the hardware. You thrive in early ambiguity, cutting through the noise to find the few constraints that actually matter, and you prioritize physical reality over opinion .
Above all, you have a track record of novel mechanical system design . You have personally taken complex physical systems from concept through CAD, prototyping, test, failure analysis, and real-world validation. Ideally, you spend your free time bui
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mous systems, end-effectors, or rugged electromechanical hardware.

• Rapid Prototyping: Rapid-prototyping fluency across additive and subtractive methods and their material tradeoffs, including FDM, SLA, CNC, and laser cutting.
• Composite Structures: Carbon fiber and fiberglass composite structures, bonded assemblies, and lightweight, high-stiffness mechanical design.
• Mechanical Test Setups: Experience designing mechanical test setups, including load fixtures, vibration, drop, abuse, and environmental tests.
• Analysis Tooling: Experience building analysis tooling, including AI/LLMs, Python, MATLAB, or simulation workflows, to accelerate design and iteration.
• Defense & Aerospace Vehicles: Experience developing fielded defense or aerospace vehicles where ruggedness, flight performance, and speed matter more than presentation-quality CAD.
• Excellent Interpersonal Skills: This is a highly interdisciplinary role requiring constant interface with the aerodynamics, rotorcraft, GNC, perception, electrical, and manufacturing teams to understand and integrate subsystem needs.

Export Control
This position may involve access to technology, material, technical data, defense articles, or information subject to U.S. export-control laws, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and applicable contract requirements. Assignment to covered work is contingent upon the company’s ability to verify that the candidate is authorized to receive access to such items or information, including by qualifying as a “U.S. person” as defined in 22 C.F.R. § 120.62, or through any required export-control authorization, notice, approval, or access-control process.

EEO
Askari Defense, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.