Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

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, most critical programs with the U.S. Government, the Armed Forces, and major defense primes. The Forward Deployed team works alongside the Program team from scoping to execution.

Forward Deployed bends 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 zero to one to make a program successful. Everything the Forward Deployed team learns working at the edge with our customers is fed back to our platform teams to improve Hadrian’s product for all customers.

Recent projects have included standing up Factories-as-a-Service for the Armed Forces and multiple primes, extending Opus into new manufacturing domains such as energetics, and taking a product that was built for a single program into a $B+ product line.

The Role

As Director, you lead the Forward Deployed team on one or more programs and own its technical outcomes. You’ll get to run the technical side of a program larger than most startups ever get, working directly with the government, customer’s, and Hadrian’s leadership.

The team is early and scope is rapidly growing with Hadrian. Directors will help scale the Forward Deployed team itself and be the tip of the spear on multi-billion-dollar programs:

• Own the technical roadmap and delivery. Take the program from the first ambiguous conversation to running in production, decide what Opus covers, what gets built, and what we say no to, and hold the team to a very high execution bar. The program hits rate, quality, schedule, and cost in part because the software and systems behind it work; you own that part.

• Bring program learnings on platform teams. Share program learnings at Hadrian to improve the product for all customers and decide which Forward Deployed products should become part of Opus.

• Own the executive relationship on the technical side. Be the primary technical contact for customer program leadership, government stakeholders, and prime partners. Run technical reviews, have the hard conversations about scope and schedule yourself, and make the call when scope, schedule, and platform leverage pull against each other and the commercial stakes are real.

• Build and lead the team. Hire and grow the engineers, product managers, and designers on your program. You set the standard for how they work, and they bring you their hardest scoping calls.

• Stay hands‑on. Early in a program that can mean building the v0 yourself. Later it means reviewing what your team ships closely enough to ensure it meets Hadrian’s quality bar.

What We’re Looking For

• Highly commercial technical leaders with excellent product judgement.

• You have demonstrated history lead engineering and product teams and scaling a product from zero to one.

• You are strong with external and internal executives. You have owned senior 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.

• You are hands‑on technical You are just as comfortable supporting your team with technical. You are just as comfortable supporting your team with architecture and review as you are taking your own idea from design to delivery.

• You are 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 multiples faster, and you’ve rebuilt how your whole team works around it.

• You have hired builders into ambiguous roles and gotten them productive fast.

• 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 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.

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.

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.