Engineer (Formula SAE Track)

About the role

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.

This role is built for Formula SAE people.

If you were the person on your team who got things built, stayed late, solved ugly problems, learned whatever was needed, and refused to quit until the car worked, we want to talk.

You do not need a perfect resume. You do not need years of industry experience. You do not need to have had the fanciest title on the team. You need grit, horsepower, humility, technical curiosity, and the will to become great.

Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

What you’ll do

Design and fly lightweight, high-reliability structures for stratospheric aircraft

Own mechanical subsystems from concept to flight

Perform first-principles sizing, trade studies, and rapid iteration

Build, test, break, and refine flight hardware

Support integration, production, and flight operations

Work closely with avionics, GNC, power, RF, and software teams

What we’re looking for

Formula SAE experience

Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, or exceptional student willing to take a break from school to join a startup

Evidence that you have built real hardware, not just worked on presentations

High grit, high urgency, high ownership

Strong mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, or systems instincts

Willingness to learn anything required to get the aircraft flying

Comfortable working hands-on in a factory, lab, desert, field environment, or wherever the mission requires

Able to take feedback, improve quickly, and keep pushing

No ego about doing dirty work

Obsessed with building, testing, learning, and getting better

Bonus points

You owned a subsystem on a Formula SAE car

You manufactured parts yourself

You stayed late to debug problems before competition

You wired harnesses, machined parts, tuned systems, ran tests, or fixed failures in the field

You have CAD, FEA, machining, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience

You have a story about something breaking and how you fixed it

Why Icarus

Meaningful equity

Top market salary and bonuses

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Factory in El Segundo

Real ownership, real hardware, real flight

Small team, massive responsibility

High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture

Dream desk setup

Daily lunch

Unlimited celsius

This is not a normal engineering job

We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead

You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster

We expect full extreme ownership. This is a high-trust, no-BS team, and everyone pulls their weight

We are hiring across the stack: mechanical, aerodynamics, RF, GNC, electrical, avionics, power electronics, energy storage, software, and systems

We want builders. No hand-holding. No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. No sitting in meetings all day. Just raw engineering, real hardware, and real flight

You must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits. We move fast. We go to Mojave at 4 am in the morning . We expect results and an obsession with quality and speed

You will be a core executor of flight systems, taking them from concept to reality and driving rapid iteration loops. You will work across design, integration, testing, and flight. If you want real ownership, real hardware, and real flight milestones, this is it.

No tourists. No bystanders. Only builders.

Hiring process

This one is simple. One interview with the CEO. The only hard requirement is Formula SAE experience. No long process. No endless interview loops. No corporate nonsense. If you built real hardware on a Formula SAE team and you have the grit, hunger, and humility to grow fast, I want to talk.

US salary range

$100,000 - $160,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are considered part of Icarus' total compensation package.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. We welcome all applicants without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.