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Hadrian is building autonomous factories to reindustrialize America by combining AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing for aerospace and defense companies. The company helps customers build rockets, satellites, aircraft, ships, and other mission-critical systems up to 10x faster and at significantly lower cost. Following a $1.37B Series D at a $7.87B valuation, Hadrian is rapidly expanding manufacturing capabilities and scaling its Factory-as-a-Service platform.
The Forward Deployed team embeds engineers on Hadrian's largest, most critical programs with the U.S. Government, Armed Forces, and major defense primes. These teams work from scoping through execution, bending Hadrian's product to fulfill customer needs—sometimes extending Opus (Hadrian's AI-driven manufacturing autonomy platform), other times taking products from zero to one. Recent projects include standing up Factories-as-a-Service for the Armed Forces and primes, extending Opus into new manufacturing domains like energetics, and scaling single-program products into $B+ product lines.
As Director, you lead the Forward Deployed team on one or more programs and own technical outcomes. You'll run the technical side of a program larger than most startups, working directly with government, customers, and Hadrian leadership. Key responsibilities include: owning the technical roadmap and delivery from ambiguous initial conversations to production, deciding what Opus covers versus what gets built, and holding the team to a high execution bar; bringing program learnings back to platform teams to improve the product for all customers; owning the executive relationship on the technical side as the primary technical contact for customer program leadership, government stakeholders, and prime partners; building and leading the engineering, product, and design teams on your program; and staying hands-on—from building v0 yourself early on to closely reviewing team work to ensure it meets Hadrian's quality bar.
Qualifications and Requirements:
- Demonstrated history leading engineering and product teams and scaling products from zero to one
- Strong with external and internal executives; owned senior customer relationships and made commitments you delivered on
- Excellent product judgment; know what's worth building and what good looks like for users; shipped end-to-end multiple times
- Hands-on technical leader comfortable supporting teams with architecture and review as well as taking ideas from design to delivery
- AI-native and relentless about it; use AI to compress discovery to execution; can demonstrate concretely how it makes you multiples faster; rebuilt how your team works around AI
- Hired builders into ambiguous roles and gotten them productive fast
- Driven by mission and tempo; rebuilding the industrial base matters to you; want to deliver at the pace customers need
- Highly commercial technical leader with excellent product judgment
What will set you apart:
- Founder or founding-team experience, especially if you ran customer relationships and business decisions while still building
- Background in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, or anywhere hardware, software, and operations meet
- Forward deployed or solutions leadership at a product company
ITAR Requirement: 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 required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
