This role is built for the people at YC Startup School.

If you spent this weekend in a room full of people talking about what they are going to build, and you were one of the few who has actually shipped something, we want to talk.

You do not need a perfect resume. You do not need years of industry experience. You do not need a company, a co-founder, or a deck. You need grit, horsepower, humility, technical curiosity, and the will to become great.

Some of the best engineers we have met were three months from starting a company. Come build real hardware first. Learn how a physical product actually gets to flight, on a small team, with real ownership. Then go start something - or stay and help us own the Stratosphere.
Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.
What you'll do

Own a subsystem on a stratospheric aircraft from concept to flight
Perform first-principles sizing, trade studies, and rapid iteration
Build, test, break, and refine flight hardware and flight software
Support integration, production, and flight operations
Work closely with avionics, GNC, power, RF, structures, and software teams

What we're looking for

You have built and shipped something real - a product with users, a company, a piece of hardware, an open-source project people depend on
Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, self-taught builder, or someone willing to take a break from school or a startup idea to join a small team doing something hard
Evidence that you built it yourself, not that you managed someone who did
High grit, high urgency, high ownership
Strong software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, 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 founded something, even if it failed. Especially if it failed and you can tell us exactly why
You have a side project that got harder than you expected and you finished it anyway
You have CAD, FEA, machining, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience
You have a story about something breaking at the worst possible moment 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 that you have built and shipped something real. No long process. No endless interview loops. No corporate nonsense. Send us the thing you built - a repo, a demo, a photo of the board, a video of it working. If you built something real and you have the grit, hunger, and humility to grow fast, I want to talk.

If you are at Startup School this weekend, apply now and mention it.
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.

Icarus

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