Sr. Director, Forward Deployed Software Engineering

Hadrian Automation; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision, and life保险

Relocation support

Flexible vacation

Equity

Job summary

Hadrian Automation seeks a Senior Director to lead the Forward Deployed team across one or more programs, working directly with government representatives, customers, and Hadrian’s leadership on technical outcomes.

You will own the technical roadmap, drive end-to-end delivery from scope to production, build and mentor engineers, and remain hands-on as programs scale to multi‑billion‑dollar scope.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated history leading engineering and product teams and scaling a product from 0–1.
• Executive level stakeholder management and delivering on commitments.
• Hands-on technical leader comfortable with architecture and end-to-end delivery.
• Proven ability to ship end-to-end solutions with strong product taste and user focus.
• AI-driven mindset to accelerate discovery to execution across programs.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical roadmap and delivery end-to-end from scoping to production.
• Share program learnings across the business and decide which products to ship.
• Executive ownership: act as the primary technical owner for customer programs and partners.
• Build and grow engineers, product managers, and designers across programs.
• Remain hands-on as programs evolve to maintain quality and standards.

Skills

Leadership

Product management

Executive stakeholder management

AI fluency

Architectural leadership

Strategy & vision

Hiring & mentoring

Job description

HADRIAN - MANUFACTURING THE FUTURE

Hadrian is building autonomous factories to reindustrialize America. By combining AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing, we help aerospace and defense companies build rockets, satellites, aircraft, ships, and other mission‑critical systems up to 10x faster and at significantly lower cost.

Following our $1.37B Series D at a $7.87B valuation, Hadrian is rapidly expanding our manufacturing footprint, launching new capabilities across welding, casting, forging, electronics, additive manufacturing, and more, while scaling our Factory-as-a-Service platform to transform how critical products are built.

Backed by leading investors including JPMorgan Chase, Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Lux Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley, we’re building the future of American manufacturing—and looking for exceptional people to help make it happen.

If you’re ready to take on the most challenging and rewarding work of your career while helping create American manufacturing jobs for generations to come, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.

FORWARD DEPLOYED AT HADRIAN

We embed Forward Deployed teams on Hadrian’s largest and most critical programs with the U.S. Government, the Armed Forces, and major defense primes. The Forward Deployed org works alongside programs and engineering teams on everything from scoping to execution.

Forward Deployed adapts our product to fulfill customer needs. Sometimes that involves extending Opus, Hadrian’s AI‑driven manufacturing autonomy platform; other times, it involves taking a new product from 0 to 1 to make a program successful. Everything the Forward Deployed team learns working on the front lines with our customers is fed back to our engineering teams to improve Hadrian’s product for all customers.

Recent projects have included establishing Factories‑as‑a‑Service (FaaS) for the Armed Forces and several major primes, expanding Opus into new manufacturing sectors such as energetics, and growing a product line originally developed for a single program into a programs valued at over $1b.

THE ROLE

As a Senior Director, you lead the Forward Deployed team across one or more programs and are responsible for their technical outcomes. You will oversee the technical aspects of a program larger than most startups ever experience, working directly with government representatives, customers, and Hadrian’s leadership teams.

The team is in its early stages, and the scope is rapidly expanding with Hadrian. You will play a key role in scaling the Forward Deployed team and leading multi‑billion‑dollar programs.

• Own the technical roadmap and delivery end‑to‑end. Drive programs from ambiguous first conversations to production deployment—defining scope, determining what gets built, and making clear, decisive calls on what we ship.
• Share program learnings across the business to improve the product and determine which Forward Deployed products are shipped to both current and future programs and customers.
• Executive ownership: serve as primary technical owner for customer program leadership, government stakeholders, and prime partners. Lead technical reviews, oversee discussions regarding scope and scheduling, and drive technical decisions across programs.
• Build and lead the team. Hire and grow engineers, product managers, and designers across programs. You set the standard for how they work.
• Remain hands‑on as programs evolve—build the early foundation, then drive quality, set the bar for excellence, and ensure the team delivers to that standard.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Highly commercial technical leaders with excellent product judgment.
• You have a demonstrated history leading engineering and product teams and scaling a product from 0-1.
• Executive‑level stakeholder management. You have owned executive level customer relationships and made commitments on behalf of a company that you then had to deliver on.
• You have product taste. You know what’s worth building and what good looks like for the user, and you’ve shipped end‑to‑end enough times to back that up.
• Hands on technical leader. You are just as comfortable supporting your team with architecture and review as you are taking your own idea from design to delivery.
• AI-native and relentless about it. You use AI to compress everything from discovery to execution, you can show us concretely how it already makes you and your teams run 5x faster.
• Track record of building highly productive teams in ambiguous enviorments.
• You are driven by the mission and the tempo. Rebuilding the industrial base matters to you, and you want to deliver at the pace our customers need.

WHAT WILL SET YOU APART

• Founder or member of a "founding-team"
• Experience owning customer relationships and business decisions.
• Background in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, or anywhere hardware, software, and operations intersect.
• Forward‑deployed or solutions leadership at a product company.

What it means to be a Member of Technical Staff

Every Engineering, Product, and Design hire at Hadrian joins as a Member of Technical Staff (MTS). An MTS takes a problem from ambiguity to production, pushing hard at the edge of what AI agents can do to tame manufacturing problems that were intractable a year ago. Your unit of work is a problem solved, not a ticket or a pull request. You set the intent, build the verification loop, and then unleash agents on work that used to need a team. You own what your agents produce, end to end. You can explain what they do, why it is correct, and how the next set of agents will fix the problems this one surfaced.

BENEFITS FOR FULL‑TIME EMPLOYEES

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans for employees 401k
• Relocation support may be provided for certain situations, based on business need.
• Flexible vacation policy
• Equity

ITAR REQUIREMENTS

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

USE OF AI IN HIRING

Hadrian uses AI-assisted tools in our recruiting and hiring processes to help our team work more efficiently. This may include tools that help organize and analyze recruiting data, as well as an AI-powered notetaker that can record and transcribe interviews and help coordinate feedback. These tools support our team and are not used to make hiring decisions. All candidate evaluations and hiring decisions are performed by humans. If an interview will be recorded, you will be notified in advance and may opt out at any time with no impact on your candidacy. Candidate data processed through these tools is subject to the same protections described in our Privacy Policy https://www.hadrian.co/privacy-policy.

CONSIDERATION OF CRIMINAL HISTORY

Hadrian will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of all applicable laws. We do not ask about criminal history on our application, and we do not consider criminal history before making a conditional offer of employment.

HADRIAN IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Hadrian does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, marital status, mental status, physical disability or any other legally protected status. When necessary, the Company also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled candidates and employees, including for candidates or employees who are disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.