Lead / Senior Spacecraft Structures Engineer

Role: Lead / Senior Spacecraft Structures Engineer Industry: Space Technology Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India Role Type: Full-time Experience: 5+ years of experience

Key Responsibilities:

• Design spacecraft primary and secondary structures, including frames, panels, decks, brackets, equipment mounts, payload interfaces, and other flight-hardware assemblies.

• Translate spacecraft level mechanical, launch, payload, thermal, and interface requirements into practical structural designs. Develop structural concepts that achieve the required balance of mass, stiffness, strength, manufacturability, reliability, cost, and schedule.

• Own detailed 3D CAD models, engineering drawings, interface definitions, GD&T, tolerance schemes, and manufacturing release packages.

• Perform preliminary structural sizing and engineering calculations for load paths, margins, joints, fasteners, interfaces, and critical structural elements.

• Work closely with structural analysis engineers to evaluate static strength, modal behaviour, vibration response, buckling, fatigue, and launchload environments.

• Use analysis and test results to refine designs and close structural margins efficiently.

• Select appropriate materials, manufacturing processes, surface treatments, joining methods, inserts, fasteners, and structural interfaces for flight hardware.

• Design for manufacturing, assembly, integration, inspection, and test not simply for CAD completeness.

• Conduct tolerance-stack and interface assessments to ensure reliable assembly of spacecraft and payload hardware.

• Work closely with Systems, Payload, RF, Thermal, Electronics, AIT, Manufacturing, Analysis, and Quality teams to resolve multidisciplinary design challenges.

• Support supplier selection, technical discussions, manufacturing reviews, non-conformance resolution, and inspection of flight hardware.

• Participate in and drive mechanical portions of design reviews such as PDR, CDR, manufacturing readiness, test readiness, and flight readiness reviews.

• Define and support structural verification activities, including modal, sine vibration, random vibration, acoustic, shock, fit-check, and other environmental test campaigns as applicable.

• Support spacecraft assembly and integration on the shop floor and in cleanroom environments, resolving issues quickly and methodically when hardware does not behave exactly as expected.

• Investigate structural anomalies, manufacturing deviations, test failures, or integration issues and drive them through root-cause analysis and closure.

• Maintain strong engineering documentation, configuration control, design rationale, test evidence, and traceability for flight hardware. Mentor junior mechanical engineers and designers while raising the overall quality of spacecraft mechanical engineering within the team.

Preferred Experience in below:

• Small satellite structural architecture
• Payload structural design and precision payload mounting
• SAR, Antenna, RF payload, or Earth observation spacecraft
• Lightweight structural optimization
• Honeycomb sandwich panels and composite structures
• Launch vehicle interface design
• Structural qualification and acceptance testing
• Vibration test fixture design and test correlation
• Spacecraft mass properties management
• Thermal structural interaction and dimensional stability
• Mechanism or deployable structure interfaces
• Mechanical interface control documents
• Flight hardware configuration and non conformance management
• Hands on spacecraft AIT activities