Lead Engineer - Prototype Build

American Turbines; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous stock package

Medical, vision, and dental care

Job summary

American Turbines is seeking a Lead Engineer to own the schedule for its first turbine, overseeing combustion, aerodynamics, mechanical, controls, and power electronics to deliver a tested demonstrator. You will turn a stack of workstreams into a single execution plan and be accountable for its delivery.

You will schedule, break work into tasks, delegate to engineers, and lead daily/weekly meetings. Expect hands-on involvement in testing, fixturing, and vendor coordination while earning the

Qualifications

• Experience shipping hardware from 0 to 1, ideally in a small, fast-moving hardware team.
• Judgment to build realistic timelines and discipline to meet them.
• Willingness to dive in hands-on when the schedule requires it.

Responsibilities

• Set the project timeline and break it into actionable tasks.
• Delegate work to engineers and track progress against promises.
• Run daily and weekly engineering meetings and unblock blockers.
• Step in to assist with debugging tests, design calls, or hands-on work in the shop.

Skills

Leadership

Project management

Hardware development

Scheduling

Tools

Test rigs

Job description

About American Turbines

The power grid was built for a world that no longer exists. Centralized generation, hundred-mile transmission lines, decade-long permitting cycles. Meanwhile, demand is exploding: AI data centers, industrial electrification, remote operations that need megawatts yesterday and can't wait for utilities to catch up.

American Turbines is designing small modular gas turbines, purpose-built for distributed power generation. Machines designed from a blank sheet to be manufactured at scale, clustered in arrays. Hundreds of units operating in parallel, dynamically matching load like a compute cluster matches demand. We are a seed-stage company backed by the investors behind SpaceX, Boom Supersonic, and Hadrian.

About the Role

The Lead Engineer will own the timeline for American Turbines' first turbine, from where it stands today through a fully built and tested demonstrator. You will turn a stack of engineering workstreams, combustion, aerodynamics, mechanical, controls, power electronics, into a single execution plan, and you will be the one accountable for whether that plan holds.

You will set the schedule, break it into tasks, and delegate those tasks to the engineers who own them. You will run daily and weekly engineering meetings, track what's actually getting done against what was promised, and step in wherever the build needs another set of hands: fixturing a part, running a test, chasing a vendor. Beyond keeping the schedule honest, you'll pick up engineering work directly when the team needs it, whether that's helping debug a test rig issue, sanity-checking a design call, or just taking a task yourself when someone's stuck.

This is not a role where you set a plan on a whiteboard and let the team execute it on their own. You will be in the shop as often as you're in a planning meeting, and the team's respect for your leadership will come from both.

What We're Looking For

A track record of taking hardware from 0 to 1 and shipping it, ideally at a small, fast-moving hardware team. You don't need direct turbomachinery experience. What you need is the judgment to build a realistic timeline, the discipline to hold a team to it, and the willingness to get your hands dirty when the schedule calls for it.

You've led engineers more senior or more specialized than you before, and you know how to earn their trust rather than assume it. You default to build-and-test over simulation, and you know the difference between a schedule slip that's normal and one that's a real problem.

You're effective at quick check-ins, not just deep dives. You won't have time to go deep on every workstream, so you need to know when a two-minute conversation is enough to unblock someone and when a problem actually needs you to sit down and work it with them.

Compensation

$200,000 to $250,000 base.

Generous stock package.

Medical, vision, and dental care.

2% matching on 401(k).