Senior Powerpack Engineer at Cowboy Space Corp. in Washington, DC

Job description

About Cowboy Space Corp: Mission Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth. Background Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport. Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases. Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others. This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation ’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you. About the Role: The turbopump is the heart of the engine and sets its performance ceiling. In this role you own turbopump hardware outright: its design definition, its interfaces, the analysis that backs it, and how it performs in build and on the stand. You will work the full lifecycle, from architecture trades and detailed design through fabrication, hot fire, and flight, and you will own the case that the hardware meets its requirements. Senior engineers here also set the technical bar for the people around them, reviewing design work and bringing along the Level I and Level II engineers on the team. This is where you put your name on flight hardware. Responsibilities: • Bring a culture of creativity to every design challenge. Own each solution or improvement with true accountability, seeing it through to completion. • Own the mechanical design and development of turbopump hardware from concept through hot fire testing and flight: inducers, impellers, diffusers, volutes, turbine stages, dynamic seals, bearing supports, pump housings and assemblies. • Lead architecture trades on the pump and turbine, including shaft speed, stage count, specific speed, bearing and seal arrangement, and how each of those choices lands against the engine cycle. • Integrate hydro, aero, structures, rotordynamics, secondary flow, thermal, and bearing constraints into a single design definition the rest of the team can build to. • Perform and direct analysis: hand calculations, FEA, rotordynamic models, secondary flow and axial thrust balance, and life prediction for high-stress, high-cycle hardware. • Own the verification argument for your hardware. Decide what closes by analysis and what has to close on the stand, write the plan, and see both through. • Select materials and manufacturing processes for cryogenic, high-speed, high-s