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Hop Aero

Mechanical Design Engineer

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Wage

$100,000 – $120,000/yr

Employment Type

Full-time

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Posted on November 11, 2026

Job Description

Overview

Hop Aero is building rockets that deliver cargo to contested environments, operating at the intersection of aerospace, national security, and hard execution. They are looking for a hands-on Mechanical Design Engineer to own real flight and ground hardware from concept through test and iteration.

Responsibilities

  • Design and own mechanical hardware for flight vehicles and ground support equipment.
  • Take parts from CAD to drawings to fabrication to assembly to test, with full ownership of outcomes.
  • Design for manufacturability, rapid iteration, and imperfect real-world conditions.
  • Support and participate in test campaigns, including on-site troubleshooting and repairs.
  • Work directly with propulsion and test engineers to resolve mechanical issues uncovered during testing.
  • Do hand calcs and run FEA simulations.
  • Continuously improve internal design, build, and test workflows as we scale.

Requirements

  • Demonstrable experience designing and building real mechanical hardware that was tested in the real world.
  • Strong CAD skills (Siemens NX strongly preferred, SolidWorks is also helpful) and the ability to produce build-ready drawings.
  • Solid understanding of common manufacturing methods (machining, welding, sheet metal, composites, rapid prototyping).
  • Comfort getting hands-on with hardware, tools, and test equipment.
  • Ability to work independently, take ownership, and move forward with incomplete information.
  • Willingness to spend time in the shop and at a remote test site when needed.
  • Experience level is flexible; we care more about what you’ve built than how many years you’ve worked.

Benefits

  • Health Insurance

Compensation

  • The base pay range for this role is $100,000 – $120,000 per year.

Benefits

Health Insurance
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How this job compares in Los Angeles, CA

Pay in context

At roughly $53/hr, this posting lands within a few percent of the $49/hr median for welding jobs in Los Angeles, CA, whose middle half runs $37–$69/hr across 55 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 53% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. In other words it is a market-rate offer, so benefits, overtime, and shift schedule are where the real difference between this and the next posting on the list shows up.

The local market in Los Angeles, CA

We're tracking 100 other active welding openings in Los Angeles, CA right now, from 49 different employers. 32 of them were added in the last week. Across California as a whole we're tracking 505 other active welding openings from 239 employers. A metro this active generally means you have real leverage — employers here are competing for the same welders. Browse every welding job in Los Angeles, or widen the search to California.

The most active employers in California at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are SpaceX (37), Relativity Space (18), and Welding Shop in Los Angeles, CA (13). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.

Within California, the best-paying metros we track by median hourly rate are El Segundo at $53/hr, Pasadena at $50/hr, and Long Beach at $49/hr. If you can relocate or commute, that spread is worth factoring in.

Similar openings near Los Angeles, CA

Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. Mechanical Design Engineer figures were last recalculated when this page was built.