Mount Indie is looking to add expertise to a team building a deployable metal manufacturing cell, a new xCell variant that puts metal part production inside a container and takes it to the field. The concept is defined and the technology is selected. What doesn't exist yet is the machine.

We're looking for a Staff Systems Engineer who wants to own hard problems from concept and requirements through production (this is not a maintenance role). You have a senior engineering background and experience taking complex capital equipment from concept to fielded product, and you know how to turn a manufacturing process into a machine that survives being shipped, set up, and operated a long way from a factory. 

You'll work as a senior individual contributor with real autonomy, but you also understand the value of input from your teammates. You'll help build and field metal manufacturing and other systems at a company that is still early enough for your fingerprints to matter. If you want to spend your time in a large program office working minutiae and moving PowerPoints, this isn't the right place. If you want to build things that matter, that have near term impact, and work with a tight team that acts with both urgency and rigor, we should talk.

What You'll Own

• System integration: lead the integration of the metal manufacturing cell as a system, including container architecture and layout, structural and thermal design, power distribution, gas supply, and fume extraction and filtration. You turn a set of subsystems into a product.
• Controls and electrical integration: motion control, interlocks, safety circuits, and machine interfaces. You coordinate across our suppliers and our own software team so the cell behaves as one machine rather than several.
• Design reviews and gate packages: you are the responsible engineer at PDR, CDR, and FDR, owning the drawings, interface definitions, verification plans, and the evidence that each gate has actually been met.
• Build, commissioning, and test: stand the cell up, run factory and site acceptance testing, and prove it survives transport and the field. Shock, vibration, and environmental qualification sit with you.
• Supplier technical management: work with metal deposition, motion, container, and other equipment partners. Hold them to spec, review what they deliver, and ensure they stay aligned with our scope.
• Post-processing and finishing integration: integrate the full part journey from raw feedstock through final part, including CNC machining, finishing operations, and inspection. You understand that additive is only part of the story.
• Sustaining and technical leadership: when something breaks in the field or fails to deliver as advertised, you help drive solutions with the xCell engineering team. You are a senior anchor on a growing team and elevate the engineers around you without being asked.
• Cross-functional collaboration: you work closely with the xCell engineering team, software team, quality, manufacturing, and suppliers.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Manufacturing, Mechanical, Industrial Engineering, or a related field. In lieu of a degree, 10+ years of progressive relevant experience in the engineering field.
• U.S. citizenship required due to ITAR regulations, with the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance
• 7+ years of hands-on hardware development experience, from concept through production, not just analysis
• Experience integrating capital equipment or complex machinery into a constrained environment.
• Demonstrated ownership through a formal gate-based development cycle. You have been the responsible engineer at a PDR/CDR or equivalent formal design review, not an attendee.
• Hands-on commissioning experience: you have brought a machine up, found out what was actually wrong with it, and fixed it
• Hands-on experience with machining or metal fabrication, and an understanding of how those processes fit into a production flow
• Systems engineering mindset: you can hold requirements, tradeoffs, and interfaces in your head simultaneously
• Proficiency with CAD (SolidWorks preferred) and PLM tools

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with metal additive manufacturing, including powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition (DED), wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM), or cold spray. We'd rather you know what you're looking at than be an expert in all of it.
• Experience developing a transportable and/or ruggedized system. Containerized, shipboard, mobile, trailer, or shelter-based systems all count.
• Environmental or transport qualification experience: MIL-STD-810, DO-160, shock and vibration testing, or equivalent
• Controls or electrical integration experience: PLCs, robot controllers, industrial networks, safety circuits
• Experience designing equipment that will be operated by people who are not engineers
• Experience in defense, aerospace, naval, medical, or automotive applications. We care more about the depth of your hardware integration experience than the sector it came from.
• Familiarity with metal part qualification and inspection in regulated or defense environments