Salient Motion jobs, judged for you, free

What they do

Salient Motion designs and makes electromechanical actuation systems for commercial aircraft and defense. An actuator is a device that moves a part of a machine. The company designs the electronics, software, and gears in-house in the United States. Its Saginaw Precision division makes precision ball screws in Michigan. Salient Motion started in 2022.

What they value

• Mastery over ego: hire for hunger, not for ego.
• Extreme entrepreneurship: take initiative before someone asks.
• Be relentless when plans fall apart.
• Execution over excuses: execute, iterate, and improve.
• Respect the clock: time is the most limited resource.
• Win together and have fun.

Where they hire

Sixteen of the 17 open roles are in Hawthorne, California, and one is in Saginaw, Michigan. No Posting offers remote work. The firmware role asks for at least four days in five onsite. Several Postings offer relocation. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and the firmware role needs U.S. citizenship. The co-op Posting states no such rule.

Teams and roles

The board lists 17 roles. Seven are in mechanical engineering, and the Saginaw role is one of them.

• Mechanical engineering: mechanical engineers at three levels design actuators, gear mechanisms, avionics enclosures, and test equipment. A test engineer runs vibration, shock, and thermal qualification tests. There is also a senior CAD designer who makes 2D drawings, and a wire harness design engineer.
• Hardware engineering: an electrical engineer who designs circuits and board layouts in Altium, and a senior power electronics engineer for converters and inverters above 10 kW. A controls engineer writes motor control firmware in C.
• Firmware: a firmware engineer who writes C for STM32 microcontrollers and finds board faults with an oscilloscope.
• Supply chain: a buyer, and two category managers, one for electronics and one for mechanical parts.
• Operations: an electrical engineering technician who solders and reworks circuit boards.
• People: a people operations generalist, the first dedicated hire for that work.
• Co-op: a paid engineering co-op for students that lasts six months or more. The Posting says that the work is onsite in Torrance, California.

Most Postings state a base salary range and equity.

What they look for

Engineering roles ask for a bachelor's degree in the related engineering field. The mechanical, test, and firmware engineer roles ask for two or more years of experience. The electrical and wire harness roles ask for three. The senior mechanical role asks for five, the power electronics role for seven, and the principal role for ten. The two supply chain manager roles ask for five years in sourcing.

Mechanical roles want SolidWorks or a different CAD package, GD&T, and design for manufacturing. Senior mechanical roles and the test role want experience with qualification to DO-160 and MIL-STD-810. Firmware and controls roles want strong C, and interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, and CAN. Supply chain roles want knowledge of AS9100, and many Postings prefer aerospace or defense experience.

The Postings want people who work with their hands in the lab. The senior roles ask for a builder mindset, and that means you assemble and debug your own hardware. The people operations Posting says that candidates have 1:1 interviews and visit onsite. The interviewers then meet to agree on their feedback.