Staff Design Reliability Engineer

Vast is looking for a Staff Design Reliability Engineer, reporting to the Senior Manager, Design Reliability, to support the development of the systems that will be required for the design and build of artificial-gravity human-rated space stations.

This will be a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

Responsibilities: 

• 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.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ 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, 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.