Seat & Headrest Design Engineer

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000+ engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.

When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.

Workplace : On-Site, 5 days per week

Location : Foster City, CA

Salary : $105-120k

We are seeking a Seat & Headrest Design Engineer that will be responsible for the overall mechanical component and system design, from concept to shipment, for our headrests and seats. We will be developing design and doing analysis in-house. You will also be responsible for developing test and validation plans while documenting and communicating designs, trade-offs, and status updates with various multi-functional teams including Industrial Design, Vehicle Engineering, Purchasing, Reliability, Packaging, Quality, Manufacturing & Safety.

Responsibilities

• Outstanding skills and experience leading automotive seating design and development projects

• Demonstrable excellence designing seat components, particularly headrest assemblies

• Emphasis on seating structures and complete seat expertise demonstrated over multiple projects.

• Must be able to demonstrate the ability to design systems to meet seat headrest requirements:

• Safety requirements, including design considerations that influence HIC scores,

• FMVSS requirements

• IIHS requirements

• Comfort requirements

• Modal/NVH requirements

• Operational strength

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineer requires, Masters preferred.

• 2-5 years of experience designing various components and full seating systems

• Strong analytical/problem solving skills and general mechanical engineering analysis

• Strong materials knowledge; good understanding of different materials and grades

• Ability to articulate design issue quantitatively both verbally and with documentation

• Solid 3-D CAD skills, including significant experience with Catia v6. Seat system packaging, kinematics and modeling capability necessary

• Demonstrated ability in metallic and composites part design

• Working knowledge of finite element analysis theory and general mechanical engineering analysis

• Design for Manufacturability (DFM), and Design for Assembly (DFA), statistical tolerance analysis techniques, functional dimensioning, and geometric tolerancing, preparing and checking 2D drawings

• Experience in a team environment and being self-motivated to close design issues

• Flexibility and comfort working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment that is prone to change

Salary Range

• $105,000 - 120,000

• The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate’s combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, genetic information, or pregnancy.

Please beware of job seeker scams and see this important notice (https://www.alten.com/careers/job-offers/) on our careers page for more information about our recruiting process.

Compliance Notice: Alten USA is a federal contractor subject to the requirements of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and Executive Order 11246. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Drug Screening Requirement: As a federal contractor, Alten USA maintains a drug-free workplace. All candidates selected for employment will be required to successfully complete a pre-employment drug screening as a condition of hire.