Operations
Graphic design, merch, and social media. What people see when they have never set foot in the shop.
Operations is the subteam behind McMaster Rocketry's public face. Members design merch and competition graphics, shoot build nights and pad footage, and run the team's Instagram, LinkedIn, and Discord. Outreach booths at Clubsfest and Facultyfest, and the materials that go to sponsors, all build on the same look. If you want your work worn on campus or posted the morning after a launch, start here.
First year
Design a sticker or tee graphic, shoot and edit footage from a build night, or help plan and post a week of launch content. Your first project is usually one concrete piece: a design, a reel, or a booth shift.
Useful, not required
Illustration, graphic design, photography, or video editing. Writing helps for social copy and sponsor outreach. Figma, Illustrator, or similar. We teach the rest.
About 6 h / week
Every other subteam.
Each one takes members with no experience every term.
Airframe
Structures and aerodynamics: simulation, analysis, CAD and machining. The airframe has to survive peak loading and come back straight.
Avionics
Flight computers and telemetry: embedded firmware and PCB design in KiCad. This subteam decides when every event on the flight fires.
Composites
Carbon and fibreglass layup, tooling, and the finishing that makes it fly straight.
Payload
The experiment we fly, and most years the reason the rocket exists at all. CAD, electrical and software all sit on it.
Propulsion
Motor integration, thrust curves, and Icarus: our in-house hybrid engine in development alongside the commercial motors we fly today.
Recovery
Dual-deployment parachutes and the sequencing that brings the vehicle back intact.
Who runs it.
Named leads, so you know who to ask.
We hire first years.
We hire people who have never touched a rocket. Come ready to learn. We'll teach the rest.
Find us at Facultyfest on August 31, 12:30 to 17:00, or Clubsfest on September 14, 16:30 to 19:30 on the JHE field. Applications close September 18. You don't need to be an engineer: we need people on operations as much as on airframe.