Mechanical Engineer

Avol builds novel autonomous electric blended-wing aircraft to deliver urgent medical payloads between hospitals. We are seeking a highly skilled mechanical engineer to work with our engineering team to design, develop, and test various UAV components. Your work will be pivotal in developing a new class of aircraft with higher volume, longer range, and more operating areas than any other aircraft today. This job will start as either a short 3-month contract to transition into full-time hire upon completion of jointly set milestones, or full time from the start.

About you:

• You deliver. You may enjoy thoughtful conversations, but you know that what matters is delivering quality work with high attention to detail.
• You are a proactive problem-solver. If the first thing you do when faced with a new problem is ask for help, this is NOT the job for you.
• You are detail-oriented and trustworthy. We need to be able to trust what you say. If you say “nothing has changed from this version to the next,” that means zero changes, not even a battery swap.

What you can expect:

• Robust aircraft that has been tested in rain, high winds, and snow
• A hardcore aerodynamics, manufacturing, and drone engineering team
• Challenging problems in aerospace, manufacturing, and mechanical design
• This is 100% in-person at our office in the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Key Responsibilities:

• CAD: You will be required to build complex models using Solidworks. You should know how to work with complex, nonuniform planes to extend/cut/separate, design spring-loaded latches and mechanisms, standard hole clearances, and designing features based on material and mechanical properties
• Manufacturing: You should know how to design parts for molding vs machining vs 3D printing, as well as composite experience (carbon fiber or fiberglass)
• Assembly: You will be required to build what you design, which means designing parts for tool clearance, tolerances for machining vs printing, and in the case of composites or bent parts, spring-back. If you’ve read this far, tell us why spring-back is hard to design for.
• Simulation: You need to be capable of running a static analysis to analyze stress concentrations on a part and an assembly. You should also have a general idea for what factor of safety you’ll need depending on material and loading

Key personal traits:

• A good grasp of physics, free-body diagrams, be able to calculate moments and forces, and mathematically justify your arguments
• Detail-oriented and precise
• You’re organized, can make a detailed week-by-week plan of attack, and keep your teammates apprised of your progress.

Things that can set you apart:

• You’ve built and flown a tailsitter H-wing before
• You've designed and built 3+ drones from scratch

Compensation:

• Health insurance and dental included for full-time hire

Lastly, do not email Avol about this job posting - apply here on LinkedIn. Applicants that email us directly will automatically be disqualified.