Location: Lake Forest, California
Employment Type: Full-Time
Company: Water Illumination Inc.
About the Role
We are looking for a hands-on Mechanical Engineer to join an early-stage water treatment startup developing a new physical product from the ground up. This role will be deeply involved in the full product development process—from early concepts and prototypes through detailed mechanical design, fabrication, testing, iteration, and ultimately full-scale production.
This role is well suited for an engineer who enjoys building real hardware and solving practical engineering problems. You will work on mechanical systems and assemblies with a strong focus on fluid handling, structural design, material selection, machining, tolerances, sealing, assembly, serviceability, and manufacturability.
We are looking for someone with strong mechanical intuition who understands how design decisions translate from CAD to the machine shop and ultimately to reliable equipment in the field. You should be comfortable moving quickly between design, fabrication, assembly, troubleshooting, and testing, and using what you learn from hardware to improve the next design iteration.
Because we are an early-stage team, you will have significant ownership over mechanical architecture and design decisions. You will work closely with other engineers and company leadership, move quickly from ideas to physical prototypes, test your own designs, and directly influence the product as it evolves toward production and manufacturing scale-up.
Responsibilities
- Design mechanical components, assemblies, and systems for a new water treatment product.
- Design systems involving fluid handling, piping, pumps, valves, pressure vessels/housings, structural components, and related equipment.
- Take designs from initial concept through CAD, prototyping, fabrication, assembly, testing, and iteration.
- Develop detailed 3D CAD models, engineering drawings, and specifications for custom mechanical components and assemblies.
- Apply appropriate fits, tolerances, and tolerance stack-up analysis to ensure reliable manufacturing and assembly.
- Select materials, fasteners, seals, bearings, tubing, fittings, and other mechanical components based on performance and operating requirements.
- Design for pressure, loading, vibration, corrosion, sealing, thermal effects, serviceability, and environmental conditions.
- Design components with practical manufacturing processes in mind, including CNC machining, milling, turning, sheet metal, and other fabrication methods.
- Work directly with machinists, fabrication shops, vendors, and suppliers to turn designs into physical hardware.
- Build and evaluate prototypes, troubleshoot mechanical issues, and rapidly iterate based on testing and real-world performance.
- Create and maintain engineering drawings, bills of materials, specifications, and other technical documentation.
- Collaborate with electrical, controls, process, environmental, and manufacturing engineers as the product evolves.
- Help transition successful prototypes into reliable, manufacturable, serviceable, and scalable products.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
- Strong foundation in mechanical engineering fundamentals, including mechanics, materials, fluid systems, machine design, and manufacturing.
- Experience designing and building physical products, machinery, equipment, or complex mechanical assemblies.
- Strong proficiency with a modern 3D CAD platform such as SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape, Inventor, Creo, or similar.
- Experience creating manufacturing drawings and specifying dimensions, tolerances, fits, and critical design requirements.
- Experience designing machined components with manufacturability and assembly in mind.
- Experience taking mechanical designs through multiple rounds of prototyping, testing, and iteration.
- Ability to independently troubleshoot mechanical problems, identify root causes, and develop practical solutions.
- Comfortable working hands-on with prototypes, tools, components, and test equipment.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, including working effectively with engineers, machinists, technicians, vendors, and suppliers.
- Comfortable discussing, defending, and improving designs through technical review and team feedback.
Preferred Experience
- Experience working in a startup, R&D, product development, or other fast-moving engineering environment.
- Direct experience working with machine shops and collaborating closely with machinists.
- Hands-on machining experience with manual mills, lathes, or CNC equipment.
- Experience designing fluid-handling systems involving pumps, valves, piping, tubing, filtration, membranes, seals, or pressure-containing components.
- Experience in water treatment, wastewater treatment, industrial equipment, process equipment, chemical processing, or adjacent industries.
- Experience selecting materials and designing components for wet, corrosive, chemically aggressive, or high-pressure environments.
- Experience sourcing custom components, working with fabrication vendors, and evaluating manufacturing methods and quotations.
- Experience developing test fixtures, conducting mechanical testing, and using test results to drive design improvements.
- Experience building, commissioning, or field-testing prototype systems in real-world operating environments
- 3+ years of relevant mechanical design or product development experience
What We’re Looking For
More than anything, we are looking for a strong mechanical problem solver and builder—someone who can look at a mechanical system, understand how the components interact, anticipate likely failure modes, and develop practical, robust solutions.
This role is a good fit for an engineer who enjoys working between the CAD workstation, the machine shop, and the prototype bench. You should care not only about whether a design works on screen, but whether it can be fabricated, assembled, sealed, tested, serviced, and operated reliably in the real world.
We value strong engineering fundamentals, mechanical judgment, and the ability to learn quickly from hardware. You should be comfortable diagnosing problems, making design tradeoffs, and iterating based on test results and hands-on experience.
You do not need to come from the water treatment industry specifically. Experience developing complex physical products, machinery, industrial equipment, robotics, aerospace hardware, automotive systems, energy equipment, or other electromechanical or fluid-handling systems can translate well to this role.
Why Join Us
You will have the opportunity to help define a new water treatment product at a very early stage and have direct influence over how the system is designed and built. Rather than maintaining an existing product, you will be helping create the mechanical architecture, prototypes, and engineering practices that become the foundation of the product as the company grows.
Pay: $70,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Vision insurance
Education:
Ability to Commute:
- Lake Forest, CA 92630 (Required)
Ability to Relocate:
- Lake Forest, CA 92630: Relocate before starting work (Required)
Work Location: In person
