Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.

This role is built for the people at YC Startup School.

If you spent this weekend in a room full of people talking about what they are going to build, and you were one of the few who has actually shipped something, we want to talk.

You do not need a perfect resume. You do not need years of industry experience. You do not need a company, a co-founder, or a deck. You need grit, horsepower, humility, technical curiosity, and the will to become great.

Some of the best engineers we have met were three months from starting a company. Come build real hardware first. Learn how a physical product actually gets to flight, on a small team, with real ownership. Then go start something — or stay and help us own the Stratosphere.

Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

What you’ll do

• Own a subsystem on a stratospheric aircraft from concept to flight
• Perform first-principles sizing, trade studies, and rapid iteration
• Build, test, break, and refine flight hardware and flight software
• Support integration, production, and flight operations
• Work closely with avionics, GNC, power, RF, structures, and software teams

What we’re looking for

• You have built and shipped something real — a product with users, a company, a piece of hardware, an open-source project people depend on
• Recent grad, soon-to-graduate student, self-taught builder, or someone willing to take a break from school or a startup idea to join a small team doing something hard
• Evidence that you built it yourself, not that you managed someone who did
• High grit, high urgency, high ownership
• Strong software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, or systems instincts
• Willingness to learn anything required to get the aircraft flying
• Comfortable working hands-on in a factory, lab, desert, field environment, or wherever the mission requires
• Able to take feedback, improve quickly, and keep pushing
• No ego about doing dirty work
• Obsessed with building, testing, learning, and getting better

Bonus points

1. You founded something, even if it failed. Especially if it failed and you can tell us exactly why
2. You have a side project that got harder than you expected and you finished it anyway
3. You have CAD, FEA, machining, avionics, embedded systems, GNC, power electronics, batteries, or test experience
4. You have a story about something breaking at the worst possible moment and how you fixed it

Why Icarus

1. Meaningful equity
2. Top market salary and bonuses
3. Health, dental, and vision insurance
4. Factory in El Segundo
5. Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
6. Small team, massive responsibility
7. High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
8. Dream desk setup
9. Daily lunch
10. Unlimited celsius

This is not a normal engineering job

1. We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead
2. You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster
3. We expect full extreme ownership. This is a high-trust, no-BS team, and everyone pulls their weight
4. We are hiring across the stack: mechanical, aerodynamics, RF, GNC, electrical, avionics, power electronics, energy storage, software, and systems
5. We want builders. No hand-holding. No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. No sitting in meetings all day. Just raw engineering, real hardware, and real flight
6. You must thrive under pressure, learn fast, troubleshoot in the field, and push hardware to its limits. We move fast. We go to Mojave at 4 am in the morning. We expect results and an obsession with quality and speed
7. You will be a core executor of flight systems, taking them from concept to reality and driving rapid iteration loops. You will work across design, integration, testing, and flight. If you want real ownership, real hardware, and real flight milestones, this is it.

No tourists. No bystanders. Only builders.

Hiring process

1. This one is simple. One interview with the CEO. The only hard requirement is that you have built and shipped something real. No long process. No endless interview loops. No corporate nonsense. Send us the thing you built — a repo, a demo, a photo of the board, a video of it working. If you built something real and you have the grit, hunger, and humility to grow fast, I want to talk.

If you are at Startup School this weekend, apply now and mention it.

US salary range

$100,000 - $160,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are considered part of Icarus' total compensation package.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. We welcome all applicants without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.