The Role 

As a Mission Lead Engineer within National Security Programs, you’ll serve as the primary technical interface between K2 Space, customers, and partners as we develop and shape mission architectures for future and ongoing opportunities to host advanced payload capabilities onto K2’s satellite bus platform. You’ll primarily support mission-level engineering for early technical engagement, requirements formulation and negotiation, concept and architecture studies, payload-to-bus compatibility, proposal-phase activities, and program execution.  

In this role, you will work closely with Program Managers and key engineering disciplines to define and architect missions (mechanical, software, power, avionics, etc.) and ensure alignment to K2 Space’s technology and capabilities. You will also represent K2 Space in critical customer engagements, study reviews, and technical negotiations. 

The ideal candidate has strong multi-disciplinary engineering skills, hands-on experience, and excellent communication abilities to effectively collaborate with National Security customers and stakeholders.      

Responsibilities 

• Define, mature, and negotiate mission concepts. Support initial payload integration studies, mission analysis, system architecture trades, system integration designs, and concept of operations development.  
• Develop and maintain technical documentation for system architecture, payload interface designs, spacecraft design capabilities and requirements, and concepts of operations to ensure customer requirements and architectures align with K2 Space’s technology offerings.  
• Serve as the primary technical interface for early customer engagement. Lead technical discussions, represent K2 Space in TEMs and study reviews, ensure customer requirements are understood, and ensure the customer understands the extent of K2 Space’s capabilities.  
• Coordinate cross-functional early study efforts. Work closely with vehicle engineering, avionics, software, propulsion, thermal, and AI&T teams to ensure solutions are practical and executable.  

 Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. 
• 5+ Years of experience working in the aerospace or space industry, working with spacecraft or space systems  
• Direct experience designing, developing, integrating or testing spacecraft or space systems.  
• Strong understanding of spacecraft subsystems, space system architectures, and mission modeling and simulation.  
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills 

 Nice to Have 

• Master’s degree or above in an engineering discipline. 
• 10+ Years of experience working in the aerospace or space industry, working with spacecraft, launch vehicles, airborne systems, or payloads 
• Experience working directly with National Security customers and systems  
• Satellite constellation modeling, simulation and analysis experience and intuitive understanding of multibody dynamics   
• Payload performance modeling and analysis (Electro Optical, Radio Frequency, Infrared, Communications, Networking, Position Navigation and timing etc) 
• Deep understanding of national security enterprise ground systems and architectures including command and control, networking, tasking, planning, scheduling, processing, dissemination, and tracking software architectures 
• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time 

 Compensation and Benefits: 

• Base salary range for this role is $125,000 - $250,000 + equity in the company 
• Salary will be based on several factors, including, but not limited to: knowledge and skills, education, and experience level 
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks 

The Role 

As a Technical Program Manager within National Security Programs, you’ll serve as the primary technical interface between K2 Space, customers, and partners as we develop and shape mission architectures for future and ongoing opportunities to host advanced payload capabilities onto K2’s satellite bus platform. You’ll primarily support mission-level engineering for early technical engagement, requirements formulation and negotiation, concept and architecture studies, payload-to-bus compatibility, proposal-phase activities, and program execution.  

In this role, you will work closely with Program Managers and key engineering disciplines to define and architect missions (mechanical, software, power, avionics, etc.) and ensure alignment to K2 Space’s technology and capabilities. You will also represent K2 Space in critical customer engagements, study reviews, and technical negotiations. 

The ideal candidate has strong multi-disciplinary engineering skills, hands-on experience, and excellent communication abilities to effectively collaborate with National Security customers and stakeholders.      

Responsibilities 

• Define, mature, and negotiate mission concepts. Support initial payload integration studies, mission analysis, system architecture trades, system integration designs, and concept of operations development.  
• Develop and maintain technical documentation for system architecture, payload interface designs, spacecraft design capabilities and requirements, and concepts of operations to ensure customer requirements and architectures align with K2 Space’s technology offerings.  
• Serve as the primary technical interface for early customer engagement. Lead technical discussions, represent K2 Space in TEMs and study reviews, ensure customer requirements are understood, and ensure the customer understands the extent of K2 Space’s capabilities.  
• Coordinate cross-functional early study efforts. Work closely with vehicle engineering, avionics, software, propulsion, thermal, and AI&T teams to ensure solutions are practical and executable.  

 Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. 
• 5+ Years of experience working in the aerospace or space industry, working with spacecraft or space systems  
• Direct experience designing, developing, integrating or testing spacecraft or space systems.  
• Strong understanding of spacecraft subsystems, space system architectures, and mission modeling and simulation.  
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills 

 Nice to Have 

• Master’s degree or above in an engineering discipline. 
• 10+ Years of experience working in the aerospace or space industry, working with spacecraft, launch vehicles, airborne systems, or payloads 
• Experience working directly with National Security customers and systems  
• Satellite constellation modeling, simulation and analysis experience and intuitive understanding of multibody dynamics   
• Payload performance modeling and analysis (Electro Optical, Radio Frequency, Infrared, Communications, Networking, Position Navigation and timing etc) 
• Deep understanding of national security enterprise ground systems and architectures including command and control, networking, tasking, planning, scheduling, processing, dissemination, and tracking software architectures 
• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time 

 Compensation and Benefits: 

• Base salary range for this role is $125,000 - $250,000 + equity in the company 
• Salary will be based on several factors including, but not limited to: knowledge and skills, education, and experience level 
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks 

Co-Op – Design Engineer  
Location: Los Angeles, CA 
 Start Date: May/June 2026 (6-Month Program) 

About Maesa: 
The next gen beauty company, Maesa is transforming the industry by incubating and growing meaningful, innovative brands and making prestige beauty accessible. Maesa believes beauty ignites inspiration, creativity, imagination, and connection, sparking new ideas and possibilities, and meeting unmet consumer needs. Through best-in-class design, formulation, brand creation and marketing capabilities, Maesa delivers new, better and different products with an unsurpassed speed to market. Maesa works with a variety of retailers to create and launch brands across beauty and wellness categories. The current portfolio includes Kristin Ess, Hairitage by Mindy McKnight, Fine'ry, Being Frenshe, and Niches & Nooks among other brands. For more information, visit www.maesa.com. 

Position Overview: 
As a Design Engineer Co-Op, you’ll work alongside our Los Angeles-based team to support the design, development, and engineering of beauty product packaging. You'll gain real-world experience in turning creative design concepts into functional packaging solutions—working with a cross-functional global team from concept through to manufacturable files. 

This role is ideal for students pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Packaging Science, Product Design, or related fields and looking to gain practical experience in the cosmetics and consumer goods industries. 

This co-op position requires a full-time commitment of 40 hours per week during the Fall 2025 semester (approximately September through February) and will require to be onsite at our LA office a minimum of 4x a week. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Support the conversion of conceptual packaging designs into engineered 3D CAD models suitable for manufacturing. 
• Assist with creating and updating SolidWorks files, 2D drawings, and visual schematics. 
• Collaborate on the evaluation of materials and manufacturing processes including injection molding, blow molding, and decoration techniques. 
• Participate in design reviews and provide input on manufacturability and product functionality. 
• Help manage prototype development and 3D printing of packaging components. 
• Work with international engineering teams and vendors to help bring designs to life. 
• Review product testing data (e.g. drop tests, vibration tests) and document feedback. 
• Contribute to project organization, timelines, and reporting. 

What You'll Gain: 

• Hands-on experience working on real packaging projects from ideation to execution 
• Exposure to engineering standards and manufacturing processes in the beauty industry 
• Opportunities to develop technical skills in CAD, design for manufacturing (DFM), and prototyping 
• Mentorship from experienced design engineers 
• Insight into product development and cross-functional collaboration 

Qualifications: 

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Product Development Engineering, Product Design, or a related discipline 
• Familiarity with SolidWorks or other 3D CAD software (coursework or internship experience a plus) 
• Interest in consumer products, especially beauty or CPG packaging 
• Strong attention to detail and an eagerness to learn 
• Excellent communication and time-management skills 
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment 

Compensation: 

$20/hour. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location. 

PRINCIPAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCHER (PHYSICAL AI)

Freeform builds AI-native manufacturing systems that unify software, hardware, and physics to produce industrial-scale parts at the speed of human ideation. By treating manufacturing as a single integrated system, we unlock a new era of innovation where complex hardware is designed, built, and scaled without limits.

This architecture enables continuous generation of petabyte-scale, high-fidelity data capturing the physics of metal printing - from in-situ process signals and machine state to geometry and material outcomes. Each factory node contributes to a growing learning system that improves modeling accuracy, control performance, yield, and scalability over time. 

Freeform is hiring a Principal Machine Learning Researcher to lead the development of advanced learning and control problems in a production-scale, AI-native metal manufacturing system. The role focuses on developing machine learning methods that integrate large-scale physical data with physics-based simulation and embedding these models into closed-loop control and autonomy frameworks. Work includes modeling relationships between process inputs, geometry, and machine state to predict thermal, mechanical, and geometric outcomes during printing, using hybrid physics–ML approaches and multi-modal in-situ data. 

Research is validated against physical outcomes and deployed into production systems, where improvements directly impact stability, yield, throughput, and capability across an expanding fleet of manufacturing nodes. Your work will have a direct and meaningful impact on how frontier technologies are designed and produced at scale. 

Responsibilities:

• Design and develop machine learning models for complex, multi-physics manufacturing processes. 
• Develop hybrid modeling approaches that combine first-principles physics with data-driven learning. 
• Lead the formulation of learning-based models used for prediction and control in production-scale metal additive manufacturing systems. 
• Develop methods to learn from large-scale, high-dimensional in-situ sensor data collected during printing. 
• Design unsupervised and self-supervised learning techniques to correlate process signals with part quality, geometry, and performance. 
• Develop models that link process parameters, geometry, and machine state to thermal and mechanical outcomes. 
• Integrate learned models with physics-based simulation and digital twin frameworks. 
• Contribute to the design of closed-loop control and autonomy systems that operate in real time on production hardware. 
• Develop learning-based approaches for machine health monitoring, anomaly detection, and system diagnostics. 
• Guide the integration of machine learning models into production software and manufacturing workflows. 
• Help define research direction and technical standards for machine learning applied to physical systems within the organization. 

Basic Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in machine learning, applied research, or related technical fields or a PhD in machine learning, applied mathematics, physics, robotics, controls, or a closely related discipline. 
• Strong foundations in machine learning applied to physical systems, modeling, or control. 
• Proficiency in Python and at least one systems-level programming language (C/C++ preferred). 
• Experience working with large-scale, noisy, real-world datasets. 

Nice to Have:

• MS or PhD in applied mathematics, physics, robotics, controls, materials science, or a related discipline. 
• Experience with hybrid physics–ML models, digital twins, or simulation-in-the-loop learning. 
• Background in autonomy, robotics, model predictive control, or reinforcement learning for physical systems. 
• Experience with image-based or sensor-based inference in industrial or scientific settings. 
• Familiarity with computational geometry or geometric modeling. 
• Comfort working across theory, experimentation, and deployment in tightly coupled systems. 
• Ability to reason from first principles and translate theory into working models and systems. 

Location:

• Based in Hawthorne, our vertically integrated facility brings technology development, R&D, and production together under one roof. We operate at the center of LA’s deep tech ecosystem, surrounded by some of the most ambitious hardware innovation happening anywhere in the country.

• Our fast-paced, cross-functional environment is built on close collaboration, and as such, this role requires full-time onsite presence (five days a week), with very limited exceptions.

What We Offer:

• We have an inclusive and diverse culture that values collaboration, learning, and making deliberate data-driven decisions.
• We offer a unique opportunity to be an early and integral member of a rapidly growing company that is scaling a world-changing technology.
• Benefits
  • Significant stock option packages
  • 100% employer-paid Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance (premium PPO and HMO options)
  • Life insurance
  • Traditional and Roth 401(k)
  • Relocation assistance provided
  • Paid vacation, sick leave, and company holidays
  • Generous Paid Parental Leave and extended transition back to work for the birthing parent
  • Free daily catered lunch and dinner, and fully stocked kitchenette
  • Casual dress, flexible work hours, and regular catered team building events
• Compensation  
  • As a growing company, the salary range is intentionally wide as we determine the most appropriate package for each individual taking into consideration years of experience, educational background, and unique skills and abilities as demonstrated throughout the interview process. Our intent is to offer a salary that is commensurate for the company’s current stage of development and allows the employee to grow and develop within a role. 
  • In addition to the significant stock option package, the estimated salary range for this role is $200,000-$400,000. However is this a unique position with outsized impact for the right game-changing hire, so we will consider compensation outside of this range on a case-by-case basis.
• Freeform is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values diversity; employment with Freeform is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.