Director of Engineering, Space Products

CisLunar Industries; Loveland (CO); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Onsite gym

Equity grant program

Unlimited PTO

Healthcare stipend

Employee discounts

Job summary

CisLunar Industries in Loveland, CO is hiring a Director of Engineering, Space Products to build and lead the engineering group behind our flight power systems. You will design and scale the organization to deliver qualified flight hardware without reliance on heroics.

You will own staffing, resource allocation, and the engineering process, while growing engineers into technical owners and future leaders. This onsite role emphasizes rapid execution and strong cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in engineering roles involving complex aerospace, defense, spacecraft, or other high-reliability hardware systems.
• 5+ years leading engineering teams, technical leads, or multidisciplinary hardware organizations.
• Evidence of building or scaling an engineering organization, with a describable org chart on arrival and departure.
• Direct experience taking hardware from concept through design, build, integration, test, and delivery.
• Technical depth in power electronics, embedded systems, electrical design, test, and manufacturing readiness.
• Experience delivering customer-funded hardware programs for government or aerospace customers.
• Eligibility to access ITAR-controlled technical data and equipment.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization, starting with direct leadership and expanding to managers.
• Define clear ownership lanes for power electronics, electrical & firmware design, systems and test, and mechanical/thermal.
• Create staffing plans, role definitions, leveling, onboarding, and growth paths.
• Bridge rapid R&D prototyping with repeatable flight hardware execution and a pathway to product.
• Establish lightweight yet credible engineering practices for requirements, interfaces, builds, qualification, and delivery.
• Monitor staffing, review readiness, open actions, and cross-functional blockers; address issues proactively.
• Collaborate with Systems Engineering, Manufacturing, and Quality to ensure buildable, inspectable, and testable outputs.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Power electronics

Systems engineering

Program management

Aerospace hardware

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Job description

We are hiring a Director of Engineering, Space Products to build and lead the engineering group behind our flight power systems.

Your role is to design and build this organization while it is still small enough to shape, and to get it delivering qualified flight hardware without relying on heroics.

This is not a role that imports heavy aerospace bureaucracy, and it is not a role that keeps us in perpetual prototype mode. It is the role that builds the bridge between the two.

Who Thrives Here

Read this section first. If it does not sound like you, the rest will not matter.

• You build structure without smothering technical creativity.
• You work well with brilliant, opinionated technical people, and you do not need to out-expert them in every domain to earn their respect.
• You can turn ambiguous ideas and signed contracts into clear engineering ownership, staffing plans, and execution paths.
• You know when to defer to the Chief Engineer on technical authority and when to make the organizational call yourself.
• You can say "no," "not yet," or "not without an owner" when the company is about to overcommit, and you can make that stick.
• You genuinely enjoy growing engineers into technical owners, subsystem leads, and future managers.

Scope and Authority

We have seen engineering leadership roles fail because the authority was never written down. So here it is.

You own, and decide:

• Headcount and hiring. You hold the engineering headcount budget and make the final hiring decision on every engineering role.
• Resource allocation. You decide how engineers are assigned across R&D, customer-funded programs, internal product development, and sustaining work. This is a decision, not a recommendation to Program Management.
• Organizational structure. Ownership lanes, role definitions, reporting lines, leveling, performance management, and personnel decisions.
• Commitment feasibility. No engineering commitment goes to a customer without your sign-off that it is staffed and achievable. You can veto scope on staffing grounds and escalation directly to the CEO if that veto is contested.
• Engineering process. Design review cadence, technical action tracking, configuration discipline, and engineering change practice, defined jointly with the Chief Engineer.
• Technical architecture authority on the hardest design and risk decisions. That sits with the Chief Engineer, and you should want it to.
• Technical vision, external narrative, and partner strategy. That sits with the CTO.
• Integrated program cadence and customer-facing schedule reporting. That sits with Program Management.

You report to the CTO. Engineering managers and leads report to you as the organization grows.

What You Will Do

• Build and lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization, directly at first and through engineering managers as it scales.
• Define clear ownership lanes. Today that means power electronics and high-voltage conversion, electrical and firmware design, systems and test, and mechanical and thermal, with manufacturing and quality support.
• Create staffing plans, hiring priorities, role definitions, leveling, onboarding, and growth paths.
• Build the bridge between fast R&D prototyping and repeatable flight hardware execution, including deciding when a concept is ready to become a funded product effort, an engineering model, a qualification unit, or a flight build.
• Establish lightweight but credible engineering practices for requirements, interfaces, build packages, qualification, acceptance, and delivery. Lightweight enough that engineers actually use them.
• Monitor execution health: staffing gaps, overloaded owners, review readiness, open technical actions, and cross-functional blockers. Surface problems before they become slips.
• Work with Systems Engineering, Manufacturing, and Quality so that engineering outputs are buildable, inspectable, testable, and supportable.
• Partner with the CTO and Business Development to translate new opportunities into realistic engineering scope, staffing needs, schedules, and risks.
• Grow engineers into technical owners, subsystem owners, lead engineers, and future engineering managers.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years in engineering roles involving complex aerospace, defense, spacecraft, or other high-reliability hardware systems.
• 5+ years leading engineering teams, technical leads, or multidisciplinary hardware organizations.
• Evidence of building or scaling an engineering organization, not only supervising individual contributors. Be ready to describe what the org chart looked like when you arrived and when you left.
• Direct experience taking hardware from concept through design, build, integration, test, qualification, and delivery, including at least one program you carried into production transition or sustaining support.
• Technical depth sufficient to hold your own on power electronics, embedded systems, electrical design, test, and manufacturing readiness. You will not be the deepest expert in the room, but you must be able to tell when an estimate is wrong.
• Experience delivering on customer-funded hardware programs for government or aerospace customers, or in a comparably high-accountability environment.
• Eligibility to access ITAR-controlled technical data and equipment.

Preferred Experience

• Spacecraft power systems, electric propulsion, high-voltage power conversion, power processing units, or flight avionics.
• New-space or growth-stage aerospace, specifically an organization that moved fast and still matured products to qualification and flight.
• Borrowing useful discipline from traditional aerospace without importing the review burden that comes with it.
• Leading teams through PDR, CDR, TRR, qualification, acceptance testing, and production transition.
• Working alongside a visionary CTO and a strong Chief Engineer without losing execution focus.
• Familiarity with AS9100 or ISO 9001, configuration management, engineering change control, requirements flowdown, and verification planning.

This role is onsite with our engineering and hardware teams in Loveland. Some flexibility exists where the work supports it, but this is not a detached remote leadership role. You need to be close to the team and the hardware to understand execution reality, coach managers, and clear blockers quickly.

If you live in Northern Colorado, that is a feature and not a compromise. Nearly every other space company on the Front Range sits in Boulder, Lafayette, Louisville, or Longmont, which means a daily I-25 commute for anyone north of Berthoud. This job does not. Relocation assistance from out of state can be discussed at the right time during the interview process.

U.S. Person Requirement

This position involves access to flight hardware and technical data controlled under U.S. export control laws. Candidates must therefore qualify as a U.S. Person - a U.S. citizen or national, a lawful permanent resident, or an individual granted asylum or refugee status. This requirement stems from federal export regulations, not from a preference regarding citizenship or national origin.

Compensation and Benefits

Base salary range: $190,000 – $230,000 per year.

Additional compensation:

• QSEHRA healthcare reimbursement program through PeopleKeep: We offer the maximum annual allowance to our employees, determined by single or married status:
• For Single status, the current year annual allowance is $6,450.
• For Single with dependents and Married, with or without dependents, the current year annual allowance is $13,100.04.
• Additional Healthcare Stipend: We offer an annual $6,000 stipend to help cover rising healthcare costs, paid out semi-monthly on every paycheck.
• Onsite gym, showers, green space, restaurant/brewery, coffee shop (employee discounts available)
• Colorado Secure Savings program through Vestwell: Employees can save a percentage of every paycheck automatically into a Roth IRA managed by the State of Colorado.
• Unlimited PTO and recognized Holidays - includes parental leave
• Equity Grant Program

We are currently evaluating healthcare and 401(k) plans to roll out immediately.

Export Control and Background Check

This position requires eligibility to access equipment and technical data regulated by United States export-control requirements, including ITAR-controlled work. A background check is required prior to any offer of employment.

CisLunar Industries is an equal opportunity employer.