Lead Reliability & Maintenance Engineer, Near Space Labs
Stratospheric Robots
$120-150k
+ Equity
Office located in Brooklyn, NY
Aerial imagery and earth observation
Job no longer available
Aerial imagery and earth observation
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
$120-150k
+ Equity
Office located in Brooklyn, NY
21-100 employees
Company mission
To democratize high-quality geospatial intelligence.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of experience in an engineering production or maintenance organization
- Experience in a small company or startup environment is desirable
- Hands-on experience with design, manufacturing or maintenance processes in Robotics, Aeronautics, Drones, Auto, IoT, or a similar field containing hardware and embedded software
- Degree in engineering; industrial, mechanical, production, electronics, aerospace or similar
- Experience managing staff
- Mission-oriented and focused on accomplishing goals autonomously
- Willingness to cover different hats and roles as the company expands
- Not afraid of using a screwdriver yourself when necessary
What the job involves
- We are looking for a self-starter, full-time Head of Maintenance to set up and lead our Fleet performance and Readiness team based in Brooklyn, NY
- This position reports directly to the CTO and works closely with our Flight Operations, Manufacturing Engineering and R&D teams
- Hire, train and lead a team of 4-5 people to maintain our fleet of aerial robots
- Set up and manage a small-scale maintenance floor in our office,
- Deliver flight-worthy units to our operations teams and to ensure successful flight missions
- Develop systems and tools to track the performance of each robot
- Together with your team, identify failure patterns and reliability issues and escalate appropriately to other engineering teams
- Set up repair processes in coordination with our manufacturing team and continuously improve checklists and tests
- Collaborate closely with the other engineering teams to identify areas with the potential to improve robot manufacturing and/or reliability
Our take
Near Space Labs provides customers with high-res imagery of the earth. The twist is, this isn’t satellite imagery, but imagery collected by a zero-emission fleet of wind-powered weather balloons, each one able to capture up to 1,000 square kilometres of imagery on each flight. This makes for an eco-friendly, low-cost alternative to satellite imagery and results in images up to 50 times clearer than those collected by satellite.
The company raised $20M in 2025 to expand its helium balloon-powered Swift aircraft. This funding will help it grow its coverage across the US and support industries like insurance and agriculture with clearer, cheaper aerial imagery.
This puts Near Space in an exciting position to offer wide-scale, high-res coverage while staying eco-friendly. Its zero-emission tech and simple design make it a smart, sustainable alternative to drones and satellites, showing how clean innovation can scale and make a real-world impact.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Apr 2025
$20m
SERIES B
Sep 2021
$13m
SERIES A
Total funding: $33m
Company benefits
- Flexible PTO
- 401k plan with company match
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Opportunity for equity
Company HQ
Brooklyn Navy Yard, NY
Leadership
Rema Matevosyan
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a Software Developer with InnoRise, then at the Institute for System Programming of Russian Academy of Sciences. Subsequently held a junior research fellowship at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
Ignasi Lluch
(Co-Founder & CTO)Worked on the Galileo Evolutions Team at the European Space Agency, and then as a Space Systems Engineering Researcher at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
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