Director of Engineering

FutureTech Recruitment; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

FutureTech Recruitment is partnering with an early-stage industrial AI startup to build a new software org from the ground up. The Director of Engineering will own technical strategy and recruit a high-performing team spanning customer software, internal ops, data, infrastructure, and applied ML.

Expect 70% hands-on coding and 30% leadership, with close collaboration to turn manufacturing workflows into durable software.

Qualifications

• Proven 0-to-1 ownership building and scaling systems at a high-growth tech startup.
• 4-10 years of experience as a software engineer, with 1+ year leading an engineering team of 3-5.
• Product-focused full-stack SWE (backend-leaning) - comfortable with 70% hands-on engineering and 30% team management.
• Daily, deep use of frontier AI tools (e.g. Claude, Cursor) in workflow.
• Able to work on-site 5x/week in South Bay Los Angeles.
• Comfortable working with both engineers and factory/operations teams.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical strategy and engineering roadmap across customer software, internal operations, data, infrastructure, and applied ML.
• Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing engineering team from the ground up.
• Design durable architecture across customer, commercial, and manufacturing systems while staying close enough to code to review critical designs.
• Collaborate with sales, operations, finance, and factory floor to turn real workflows into software.
• Raise the bar on reliability, security, and observability, measuring impact on customers and throughput.
• Travel up to 20% to customers and vendors across LA, SF, and Detroit.

Skills

Ownership

Team leadership

Full-stack SWE

AI tools usage

Cross-functional collaboration

Hands-on coding

Tools

Claude

Cursor

Job description

FutureTech Recruitment is partnered with a $11.5M funded seed-stage industrial AI startup building software that automates quoting, sourcing, and supply chain operations for aerospace and defense manufacturers. Founded in 2025, 12 people, operations across Metro Detroit and LA. Hardware is already moving - now they're building the software org from scratch.

Hiring a Director of Engineering to own technical strategy and build the engineering team from the ground up - spanning customer-facing software, internal ops, data, infrastructure, and applied ML. 70% hands-on engineering, 30% team leadership. You'll work directly with the founders, factory floor, sales, and ops to turn real manufacturing workflows into durable software.

What You'll Do

• Set the technical strategy and engineering roadmap across customer software, internal operations, data, infrastructure, and applied ML
• Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing engineering team from the ground up
• Design durable architecture across customer, commercial, and manufacturing systems - staying close enough to code to review critical designs
• Work directly with sales, operations, finance, and the factory floor to turn real workflows into software
• Raise the bar on reliability, security, and observability - measuring impact on customers and factory throughput
• Travel up to 20% to customers and vendors across LA, SF, and Detroit

Requirements

• Proven 0-to-1 ownership building and scaling systems at a high-growth tech startup
• 4-10 years of experience as a software engineer, with 1+ year leading an engineering team of 3-5
• Product-focused full-stack SWE (backend-leaning) - comfortable with 70% hands-on engineering and 30% team management
• Daily, deep use of frontier AI tools (e.g. Claude, Cursor) in workflow
• Comfortable working with both engineers and factory/operations teams
• Able to work on-site 5x/week in South Bay Los

Nice to Have

• Experience in manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, industrial software, or physical systems
• Experience with optimisation, data products, or production machine learning

$11.5M funded, 2025 vintage, real physical traction. If you want to build the software org from scratch at a company where your systems directly decide how fast American aerospace and defense manufacturers get their materials - we'd love to hear from you.