Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
Technical Lead Manager jobs in California are among the most actively recruited in the country, concentrated in software engineering, cloud infrastructure, and product development across the technology, fintech, and enterprise software sectors, with openings from first-time leads through senior engineering directors. The largest hiring markets are San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose, where companies like Google, Apple, and Salesforce maintain major engineering operations and consistently bring on technical lead managers at multiple levels. The most in-demand specialties are distributed systems leadership, platform engineering management, and AI or machine learning team leads. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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About the role
Muon seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to serve as the mechanical design technical lead for one of our satellite classes. You'll own and iterate on the class-level mechanical architecture- bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodation- while also owning specific mission instances built on that class, from requirements definition through launch integration, typically over 10-15 months per mission.
You'll start with Muon's platform building blocks and tailor them to mission needs, designing new mission-specific and platform components where required and making architecture decisions that balance performance, cost, and schedule. This is an individual contributor role with strong technical leadership responsibilities, including the potential for people management of a small team of mechanical engineers.
Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our San Jose location three days a week.
Responsibilities
- Own the mechanical architecture and design direction for a satellite class, balancing the needs of multiple concurrent and future missions
- Serve as mission mechanical lead for specific missions using your satellite class, delivering bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload mechanical solutions from requirements definition through launch vehicle integration
- Lead the design, analysis, and optimization of spacecraft structures, mechanisms, and mechanical subsystems, applying first-principles engineering to problems beyond established approaches
- Iterate and evolve the satellite class — improving performance, mass, cost, and manufacturability — and ensure designs scale from prototype builds to constellation quantities
- Work directly with customers on requirements, technical reviews, and proposal content; partner with Business Development to identify platform enhancement opportunities
- Define and champion mechanical design standards, review processes, and best practices across the organization
- Lead design reviews (PDR, CDR, MRR) and environmental test campaigns (vibration, TVAC, EMI)
- Coordinate multidisciplinary execution across structural, thermal, avionics, optical, RF, and program teams
- Mentor mechanical engineers at all levels; hire, onboard, and manage a small team as needed
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in space or other related industry
- Experience owning a spacecraft platform, product line, or major subsystem across multiple missions or products
- Proven track record of optimizing and maturing existing designs, not only clean-sheet development
- Deep competence in one or more of: structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, environmental testing (TVAC, vibration)
- Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets; proficiency with CAD (SolidWorks preferred), PLM, and FEA tools
- Customer-facing experience: technical interchanges, requirements discussions, or proposal contributions
- Demonstrated success mentoring and technically leading engineers and/or technicians
- Experience managing external vendors for part development and manufacturing
- Excellent communication, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills
- B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
Nice-to-have Skills
- Experience as a platform owner or product-line technical lead at a space company
- Direct contributions to winning proposals (technical volumes, orals, customer Q&A)
- Experience establishing engineering standards and best practices at an organizational level
- Experience with deployable structures (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
- Optomechanical instrument or payload design experience
- Experience with ADCS components: reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers
- Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS); software skills in Python or MATLAB
Salary
The salary range for this role is $202,000 - $223,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.
About Muon Space
Founded in 2021, Muon Space is an end-to-end Space Systems Provider that designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations delivering mission-critical data. Our revolutionary, integrated technology stack enables customers to optimize every dimension of their missions for faster time-to-orbit and superior constellation remote sensing performance. Our state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Silicon Valley is optimized for manufacturing spacecraft and rapid, flexible payload integration at scale. From climate monitoring to national security, Muon Space is dedicated to delivering Earth Intelligence for a safer and more resilient world.
Taking Care of Our Team
At Muon salary is only part of our total compensation package. In addition to salary, full-time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave.
Our mission embraces the entire planet and we believe our team should too. Muon is dedicated to creating a diverse and dynamic company and workforce. We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.
ITAR/EAR Requirements
This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.
About the role
Muon seeks a Staff Mechanical Engineer to serve as the mechanical design technical lead for one of our satellite classes. You'll own and iterate on the class-level mechanical architecture- bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload accommodation- while also owning specific mission instances built on that class, from requirements definition through launch integration, typically over 10-15 months per mission.
You'll start with Muon's platform building blocks and tailor them to mission needs, designing new mission-specific and platform components where required and making architecture decisions that balance performance, cost, and schedule. This is an individual contributor role with strong technical leadership responsibilities, including the potential for people management of a small team of mechanical engineers.
Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it requires onsite work at our San Jose location three days a week.
Responsibilities
- Own the mechanical architecture and design direction for a satellite class, balancing the needs of multiple concurrent and future missions
- Serve as mission mechanical lead for specific missions using your satellite class, delivering bus structure, thermal, solar, and payload mechanical solutions from requirements definition through launch vehicle integration
- Lead the design, analysis, and optimization of spacecraft structures, mechanisms, and mechanical subsystems, applying first-principles engineering to problems beyond established approaches
- Iterate and evolve the satellite class — improving performance, mass, cost, and manufacturability — and ensure designs scale from prototype builds to constellation quantities
- Work directly with customers on requirements, technical reviews, and proposal content; partner with Business Development to identify platform enhancement opportunities
- Define and champion mechanical design standards, review processes, and best practices across the organization
- Lead design reviews (PDR, CDR, MRR) and environmental test campaigns (vibration, TVAC, EMI)
- Coordinate multidisciplinary execution across structural, thermal, avionics, optical, RF, and program teams
- Mentor mechanical engineers at all levels; hire, onboard, and manage a small team as needed
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience designing, building, and testing flight hardware in space or other related industry
- Experience owning a spacecraft platform, product line, or major subsystem across multiple missions or products
- Proven track record of optimizing and maturing existing designs, not only clean-sheet development
- Deep competence in one or more of: structural mechanics and analysis, thermal management and modeling, environmental testing (TVAC, vibration)
- Mastery of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets, and mass budgets; proficiency with CAD (SolidWorks preferred), PLM, and FEA tools
- Customer-facing experience: technical interchanges, requirements discussions, or proposal contributions
- Demonstrated success mentoring and technically leading engineers and/or technicians
- Experience managing external vendors for part development and manufacturing
- Excellent communication, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills
- B.S. or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
Nice-to-have Skills
- Experience as a platform owner or product-line technical lead at a space company
- Direct contributions to winning proposals (technical volumes, orals, customer Q&A)
- Experience establishing engineering standards and best practices at an organizational level
- Experience with deployable structures (solar arrays, antennas, mechanisms)
- Optomechanical instrument or payload design experience
- Experience with ADCS components: reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers
- Experience running structural analyses (FEMAP, ANSYS); software skills in Python or MATLAB
Salary
The salary range for this role is $202,000 - $223,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.
About Muon Space
Founded in 2021, Muon Space is an end-to-end Space Systems Provider that designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations delivering mission-critical data. Our revolutionary, integrated technology stack enables customers to optimize every dimension of their missions for faster time-to-orbit and superior constellation remote sensing performance. Our state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Silicon Valley is optimized for manufacturing spacecraft and rapid, flexible payload integration at scale. From climate monitoring to national security, Muon Space is dedicated to delivering Earth Intelligence for a safer and more resilient world.
Taking Care of Our Team
At Muon salary is only part of our total compensation package. In addition to salary, full-time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave.
Our mission embraces the entire planet and we believe our team should too. Muon is dedicated to creating a diverse and dynamic company and workforce. We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.
ITAR/EAR Requirements
This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.
See All 178+ Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
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Find Technical Lead Manager JobsTechnical Lead Manager Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Technical Lead Manager Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Google14
- Cisco7
- Stantec6
- OpenAI5
- Waymo4
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software30
- Electronics & Hardware13
- Consulting & Professional Services10
- Science & Research6
- Artificial Intelligence6
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in technical lead manager jobs across California.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a closely related technical field
- Five or more years of software engineering experience with at least two years in a lead or staff role
- Demonstrated experience managing or mentoring engineers on cross-functional California-based or distributed teams
- Proficiency in one or more major programming languages such as Python, Java, Go, or C++
- Experience owning technical roadmaps, system design reviews, and architecture decisions end to end
- Familiarity with Agile or Scrum delivery frameworks and engineering best practices at scale
Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a technical lead manager in California?
The standard path is to build several years of hands-on software engineering experience, move into a senior or staff engineer role, and then transition into people management by leading a small team or project. California employers typically look for candidates who have owned a meaningful technical domain, mentored junior engineers, and driven delivery outcomes before promoting into a formal management title. No state-issued license is required, but a computer science degree or equivalent demonstrated engineering depth is a strong foundation.
How much do technical lead managers make in California?
Technical lead managers in California earn a median of about $218,290 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $129,970 for the lowest 10% to over $325,970 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire technical lead managers in California?
Employers hiring technical lead managers in California right now include Google, Cisco, and Stantec, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. California's concentration of headquartered technology companies and major engineering hubs means openings appear across both established enterprise employers and growth-stage firms in the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles area.
Which California cities have the most technical lead manager jobs?
San Francisco, San Jose, and Mountain View have the most technical lead manager openings in California. The Bay Area's density of technology headquarters and large engineering organizations drives the volume in San Francisco and San Jose, while Los Angeles has expanded rapidly as a hub for media technology, fintech, and enterprise software companies that have established substantial engineering teams in the region.
Are there remote technical lead manager jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 50% of technical lead manager openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of August 2026, reflecting how naturally the role fits distributed engineering environments. The parts of the role most commonly done remotely are one-on-ones, code reviews, roadmap planning, and cross-team coordination, while in-person work tends to cluster around onboarding, major planning cycles, and executive reviews.
How can I get hired as a technical lead manager in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry point is a senior individual contributor role at a California employer that offers formal lead programs or rotational engineering tracks, such as those run by large Bay Area technology companies and enterprise software firms. Moving from a staff engineer, tech lead, or principal engineer title into a management role after demonstrating people leadership on a project is the most common lateral path. Building a portfolio of architectural decisions, mentoring contributions, and delivery ownership is the credential that opens the door when a formal management background is absent.
Where can I find and apply to technical lead manager jobs in California?
You can find and apply to technical lead manager jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings from employers actively hiring for the role. Find roles that fit your experience level and location preference and apply directly to the ones that match.
See All 178+ Technical Lead Manager Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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