Cascade Space hiring mechanical engineer

Cascade Space is hiring a senior mechanical engineer to work on hardware for its planned lunar and deep-space communications network, according to a Y Combinator job posting that was live as of May 18. The San Francisco startup describes the role as its first mechanical engineering hire and says the position will support a planned global network of ground stations for spacecraft exploring “the moon and beyond.” The listing says the job pays $150,000 to $190,000 and is based in San Francisco with four days a week in the office. The company is part of Y Combinator’s Spring 2025 batch and lists Arlen Abraham and Jacob Portukalian as founders. ### What exactly is Cascade hiring someone to build? The Y Combinator posting says the engineer would own “mechanical integration” of vendor-supplied dish systems with Cascade’s in-house radio-frequency hardware, including feeds, low-noise amplifiers, high-power amplifiers and related electronics. The role also includes packaging sensitive RF systems, developing thermal-management strategies, setting alignment tolerances and evaluating structural, thermal and wind-loading effects on pointing systems. (ycombinator.com) The same listing says the engineer would help create environmental, lifecycle and field test plans and would be on-site for deployment, installation and commissioning of Cascade’s first array. Cascade says it is building arrays of dishes combined with a digital beamformer into a larger aperture that it compares with a 34-meter dish in NASA’s Deep Space Network. (ycombinator.com) ### Why is a ground-station startup focused on lunar communications? Cascade says on its website that it is building “the communication network” for missions beyond low Earth orbit and argues that NASA’s Deep Space Network is oversubscribed and not broadly available for commercial missions. The company says existing commercial alternatives are limited and fragmented, and that it is building “new, modern infrastructure” designed to scale. (ycombinator.com) NASA has separately described a gap in lunar communications coverage, particularly for regions such as the Moon’s far side and the south pole where direct links to Earth can be limited or unavailable. NASA’s Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems project is intended to develop commercial relay infrastructure to support astronauts, rovers and orbiters on and around the Moon. ### Who is behind Cascade Space? Y Combinator’s company page says Cascade Space was founded in 2025 by Arlen Abraham and Jacob Portukalian and has seven employees based in San Francisco. (cascade.space) The company describes itself as providing “deep space communications as a service” and says it is building a turn-key communications system for lunar and deep-space missions. Jacob Portukalian is identified by Cascade and other company materials as co-founder and chief executive. (nasa.gov) Arlen Abraham is listed on the Y Combinator jobs page as the founder contact for the engineering role. ### How early is the company in building this hardware? Cascade said on July 24, 2025 that it had raised a $5.9 million seed round to build its communications design, test and operations platform. (ycombinator.com) The Y Combinator job post now says the company “recently raised a seed round” and is making its first mechanical engineering hire, indicating the hardware team is still in an early buildout phase. That timing is an inference from the company’s July 2025 funding announcement and the current wording of the job listing. (ycombinator.com) The company’s current careers presence on Y Combinator shows one open engineering role. The posting says the engineer is expected to be comfortable with hands-on fabrication and field work as well as design work at a desk. ### What does the posting say about the job itself? The Y Combinator listing says candidates should have at least three years of experience and that the role is full-time in San Francisco. (cascade.space) The job page says the office is in SoMa, three blocks from Bay Area Rapid Transit, and that one workday each week is flexible for office or remote work. The same page says the company wants someone who can work across packaging, thermal design, structural constraints and field deployment for dish-array hardware. (ycombinator.com) Applications are being accepted through Y Combinator’s jobs platform, where the role remains posted as of May 18.