Design Reliability Engineer

• Technical Leadership: Lead the technical reviews that shape the future of artificial-gravity space habitats-providing clear, decisive guidance during milestone design reviews and major risk gates.
• Oversee qualification and test completeness for flight systems, ensuring our test campaigns are robust, disciplined, and aligned with human-rated reliability.
• Bring deep engineering intuition to test campaigns, identifying risks early and helping teams converge on safe, resilient solutions.
• Evaluate complex design and operational changes, safeguarding technical integrity as the system evolves.
• Design Excellence: Serve as the architect and guardian of Vast’s engineering standards, design guides, and review frameworks-tools that enable fast, confident decision-making across the company.
• Make engineering best practices accessible and actionable, especially for engineers moving rapidly under ambitious program timelines.
• Support and elevate engineering teams across the organization by bringing broad experience in design, build cycles, integration, and test.
• Turn organizational knowledge into lasting guidance by capturing lessons learned and strengthening future standards.
• Process Ownership: Build and steward the processes that ensure engineering rigor at scale-ensuring designs meet standards, reviews are comprehensive, and changes are consistently implemented.
• Own and continuously refine design review templates, reliability checklists, and internal design guides.
• Track design maturity and compliance across the station and vehicle architecture, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
• Build tools, frameworks, and automation that empower engineers to explore design trade-offs and risks with clarity and speed.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Work across all facets of the engineering organization to improve reliability.
• Partner with configuration and change management so that every update to flight hardware is intentional, reviewed, and fully understood.
• Partner with the internal software team to ensure system data, configuration details, and design decisions are well organized and accessible.

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in responsible engineering, design ownership, systems integration, test engineering, or reliability-focused development.
• Demonstrated experience conducting design reviews, qualification reviews, or major change assessments.
• Strong communicator and collaborative leader with high emotional intelligence, diplomacy, and the ability to influence at all levels.
• Resilient, curious, and committed to continuous learning in fast-paced or high-pressure environments.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Experience in Responsible Engineering, Systems Engineering, Office of the Chief Engineer, or Reliability Engineering roles on complex aerospace systems.
• Hands-on experience designing, assembling, integrating, or testing hardware.
• Background with spacecraft, aircraft, launch vehicles, or other mission- or safety-critical systems.
• Familiarity with fracture control, reliability methodologies, or human-rated hardware standards.
• Experience creating engineering standards, review templates, or technical guidance frameworks.
• Strong scripting and data analysis skills (Python, MATLAB, Excel) and familiarity with visualization tools (e.g., Tableau).
• Knowledge of manufacturing processes, materials selection, and hardware qualification pathways.
• Strong systems-level intuition and the ability to anticipate and articulate risks early.

Additional Requirements:

• Willingness to work overtime, or weekends to support critical mission milestones.

Pulled from the full job description

• Paid parental leave
• Parental leave
• 401(k)
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance
• Dental insurance, Base salary will vary depending on job-related knowledge, education, skills, experience, business needs, and market demand. Salary is just one component of our comprehensive compensation package. Full-time employees also receive company equity, as well as access to a full suite of compelling benefits and perks, including: medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents, generous paid time off; up to 20+ days of vacation for exempt staff and up to 10+ days of vacation for non-exempt staff with the ability to cash-out unused vacation annually, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, ClassPass credits, personalized mental healthcare through Spring Health, and other discounts and perks. We also take pride in offering exceptional food perks, with snacks, drip coffee & onsite barista, cold drinks, and dinner meals remaining free of charge, and lunch subsidized as part of Vast’s ongoing commitment to providing high-quality meals for employees.

At Vast, our mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space. Vast is developing next-generation space stations to ensure a continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Using an incremental, hardware-rich and low-cost approach, Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches, followed by additional Haven modules to enable permanent human presence by 2030. Our team is all-in, committed to executing our mission safely and on time. If you want to work with the most talented people on Earth furthering space exploration for humanity, come join us.