As a Senior Mechanical Engineer, you will own the mechanical architecture of Cerberus, our high-power laser drilling system. Your scope runs from the downhole tool and its pressure-bearing housings to the surface deployment hardware. You'll make the key design decisions, set the qualification strategy, and take hardware from concept to field deployment at multi-kilometre depths, hundreds of bar of pressure, high temperatures and in abrasive rock.
This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role. You'll work directly with the founding team and with engineers in optics, robotics, geoscience and applied physics. You'll define how mechanical engineering is done at Hades: design standards, review processes, test philosophy. As the team grows, you'll mentor and help hire the engineers who join it.
Responsibilities
- Own the mechanical architecture of the laser drilling tool and deployment system, including pressure housings, sealing systems, structural components, thermal management and deployment mechanisms. You make the key trade-offs and document them.
- Define and lead the analysis and qualification strategy. This covers structural, thermal, fatigue and fluid analysis (FEA/CFD), plus test campaigns that prove designs against extreme downhole loads, pressures and temperatures.
- Establish engineering processes, including design reviews, drawing and tolerancing standards, material and supplier qualification, and configuration management, without slowing a fast-moving startup.
- Lead design for manufacturing and assembly, and build a reliable supplier base for precision machining, special materials, seals and pressure-rated components.
- Design and run test rigs and test campaigns under representative pressure, temperature and load, and turn the results into design iterations quickly.
- Take hardware into the field. You'll lead mechanical integration, commissioning and troubleshooting on real drilling sites.
- Act as the mechanical interface to the optical, electrical and software teams, so that the whole system is robust rather than each subsystem being optimised on its own.
- Mentor engineers, raise the technical bar, and help grow the mechanical engineering team.
Qualifications
- BSc or MSc in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering or a related field. A PhD is a plus but not required.
- 8+ years designing high-reliability mechanical systems for harsh environments. Oil & gas downhole tools, aerospace, space, defence, fusion, subsea, or similar domains are strongly preferred.
- A track record of owning complex hardware from concept through qualification to field-proven or flight-proven deployment, as the technical lead rather than a contributor.
- Deep expertise in pressure vessel and pressure-housing design, sealing technologies, fatigue and fracture, materials selection for extreme conditions, and tolerance analysis. Familiarity with relevant standards (for example ASME, API or ECSS) is a plus.
- Hands-on fluency in CAD (Siemens NX, SolidWorks or equivalent) and FEA (Ansys, Abaqus or similar). You check analysis yourself, not just review it.
- Experience defining test and qualification programmes and building the rigs to execute them.
- Experience mentoring engineers and leading design reviews, ideally in a startup or other high-ownership environment.
- Exceptional ability, shown for example through patents, landmark programmes, top-tier academics, or having built something hard from scratch.
- Excellent written and oral communication in English. German is a plus.
- Willing to live in the greater Munich area and to travel to field sites.
