Sr. Mechanical Engineer - Ground Support Equipment, Project Kuiper

Sr. Mechanical Engineer - Ground Support Equipment

Project Kuiper is Amazon's low Earth orbit satellite broadband network. Its mission is to deliver fast, reliable internet to customers and communities around the world, and we've designed the system with the capacity, flexibility, and performance to serve a wide range of customers, from individual households to schools, hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and other organizations operating in locations without reliable connectivity.

Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

The Sr. Mechanical Engineer - Ground Support Equipment is the technical expert in design and operation of launch site ground support equipment (GSE). This role interfaces directly with launch site engineers and management to understand GSE needs for new and existing processing facilities. Additionally, the Sr. Mechanical Engineer - Ground Support Equipment will develop cost estimations, lead procurement, manage vendors, run design reviews, and establish acceptance criteria for maintaining and commission hardware. This position is responsible for designs and managing all phases for new and existing ground support equipment in support of Kuiper launch operations.

The ideal candidate is comfortable in a highly technical setting and leads collaboration with other departments to reach the best solution to any problem. The candidate will have extensive experience with mechanical, pneumatic and electrical system development for GSE, with particular focus on satellite processing.

Key job responsibilities:

• Design and manage GSE through development and build cycles to support launch operations.
• Coordinate with launch operations personnel to understand operational requirements and develop GSE to meet those requirements.
• Develop and approve specifications for performance, fabrication, acceptance test and maintenance.
• Manage external partners to ensure GSE meets specifications and timelines.
• Establish technical documentation for maintenance and proofload requirements.
• Perform analysis (hand calculations and finite element analysis) to support design.
• Design and analysis of concept CAD models using Siemens NX and Femap.
• Maintain and report on equipment schedule, budget, and technical status.
• Implement and continuously improve GSE operations.
• Assembly, integration, and test takt time and cost optimization planning.
• Shift schedule will vary, depending on production/launch schedules.
• Must be willing and able to perform extended travel up to 25% annually, either domestically or internationally as business needs demand.

A day in the life:

The Sr Mechanical Engineer will spend significant amounts of time collaborating with hardware engineering, quality, and manufacturing teams to determine GSE needs. They will be responsible for maintaining hardware to support operations. They will lead GSE efforts at the launch sites and address root cause of failures and issues, implement corrective actions and hardware modifications.

We are a fast-paced, data-driven team, and work with leaders in multiple technology areas to deliver the best product for our customers. We hold each other to relentlessly high standards, and constantly look for ways to improve the product's performance, quality and cost. We are excited about the technical challenges, which motivates us rather than discourages us. We dive deep to find root cause and implement solutions to ensure long term reliability.

About the team:

Here at Amazon, we embrace our differences. We are committed to furthering our culture of inclusion. Amazon has ten employee-led affinity groups, reaching 40,000 employees in over 190 chapters globally. We have innovative benefit offerings, and host annual and ongoing learning experiences. Amazon's culture of inclusion is reinforced within our 16 Leadership Principles, which remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust.

At Amazon, our mission is to be the most customer-centric company on Earth. To get there, we need exceptionally talented, bright and driven people. We're dedicated to supporting new team members. Our team has a broad mix of experience levels and Amazon tenures, and we're building an environment that celebrates knowledge sharing and mentorship.

We want individuals who are ready for this challenge and want to reach beyond what is possible today.