Staff Vehicle Engineer

Inversion is an aerospace and defense company pioneering advanced reentry technology to enable next-generation capabilities from space. By combining high-performance materials, precision aerodynamics, and mission-driven autonomy, Inversion is transforming reentry into an operational capability for an entirely new class of missions.

The company’s highly maneuverable reentry spacecraft, Arc, is designed for rapid global cargo delivery, hypersonic testing, and other national security missions that require precise, controlled flight through the atmosphere. Arc creates an entirely new transportation domain, unlocking unprecedented speed and global reach.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Inversion designs, manufactures, and integrates its spacecraft under one roof, enabling the company to move rapidly from concept to flight. The company is backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, with customers across the U.S. government and commercial space industry.

Position Overview

As a Staff Vehicle Engineer at Inversion, you will report directly to the Chief Engineer. In this role, you will tackle some of the most complex, interdisciplinary technical challenges across the entire Arc hypersonic reentry vehicle. You will be a technical anchor that ensures all subsystems converge into a high-performance, flight-ready vehicle across structures, aerothermal, GNC, avionics, and propulsion. If you thrive on solving impossible problems, building from nothing, and refusing to accept “that can’t be done” you’ll fit right in.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead cross-subsystem integration and resolve complex, multi-disciplinary engineering bottlenecks across the Arc vehicle.
• Own system-level trade studies balancing mass, power, thermal, aerodynamic, and structural performance.
• Define, manage, and enforce interface control documents (ICDs) and hardware-to-hardware interfaces across all vehicle subsystems.
• Own vehicle-level requirements flow-down, verification plans, and system-level validation strategies.
• Partner directly with the Chief Engineer to drive technical reviews and make critical architecture-level design decisions under uncertainty.
• Develop and maintain the vehicle master mass properties, volume budgets, and performance margins.
• Lead root-cause investigations for complex, multi-system technical anomalies during integration and testing.