What are the responsibilities and job description for the Research and Development Engineer position at Hop Aero?
Hop Aero is a venture-backed startup building the physical internet.
Our mission is to enable resilient global logistics to protect and improve our way of life.
Our founding team has prior experience founding a satellite startup and taking it to orbit, launching 20 F9’s at SpaceX and has led engineering teams at the world’s most advanced aerospace organizations. The company is well-capitalized (VC funded and under government contracts).
About the role
We’re hiring a R&D Engineer to join as an early technical member of the team. If you want to work on something that actually matters, this is one of those rare roles where your work directly affects national security, Western resilience, and the future of high-speed logistics.
This is a hands-on, multi-disciplinary role for someone with roughly 2–4 years of experience who loves building fast, learning quickly, and solving problems with real hardware. You will not be pigeonholed here. You’ll touch every part of the vehicle stack: CAD, avionics, machining prep, integration, test ops, instrumentation, and much more.
Rapid prototyping is the core of this job. We move from idea to flight test in a week. We value working solutions over perfect ones, and people who can iterate quickly, break problems down, and build their way to answers. We care far more about what you’ve built than where you learned it. Show us projects, flight tests, code, parts you machined, boards you designed, or anything else that made it out of your head and into the real world. Portfolios get noticed.
Job Description
- Support the design, build, and test of aerospace hardware
- Assist with CAD and mechanical design tasks
- Help with fabrication, integration, and assembly of test hardware
- Support avionics testing and flight electronics debugging
- Contribute to manufacturing prep, including drawings and BOMs
- Participate in test operations, data review, and troubleshooting
- Work in person with the team at our shop in Orange, CA
Requirements
- Around 2–4 years of relevant engineering experience
- Demonstrated hands-on work: rockets, drones, machining, electronics, flight tests, or similar
- Ability to show prior projects (GitHub, videos, portfolio, write-ups, etc)
- Strength in at least one area: mechanical design, avionics, control algorithms, flight software, machining, integration, or test ops
- Fast learner who likes switching between disciplines
- Must be willing to travel domestically, primarily between our HQ in Orange, CA to our test site out of state.
- Must be a US Person under ITAR - Hop Aero will not sponsor visas for this role.
Nice to have
- SolidWorks or similar CAD experience
- Familiarity with MATLAB, Python, or C
- Experience with soldering, harnessing, or test instrumentation
- Exposure to propulsion systems, rocketry, or flight control
What we offer
- Competitive salary and meaningful stock options
- Healthcare, office meals & snacks
- Direct mentorship from founders & engineers with rich flight heritage
- Fast upward mobility as the company grows
Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we’d still love to hear from you. Greatness looks different in every one of us - and we need the best tackling this problem.