Software Engineer, Builder Tools

Hadrian - Manufacturing the Future

Hadrian is building autonomous factories that help aerospace and defense companies manufacture rockets, satellites, jets, and ships up to 10x faster and up to 2x cheaper. By combining advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing, we are reinventing how America produces its most critical parts.

We're accelerating our mission with the launch of Factory 3 in Mesa, Arizona, a 290,000-square-foot facility creating 350 new jobs. We are expanding rapidly to support thousands of future hires, launching Hadrian Maritime to expand into naval production, and introducing a Factory-as-a-Service model that delivers complete systems instead of individual parts.

Hadrian is backed by leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz, our fast-growing team is united around reindustrializing American manufacturing for the 21st century and beyond.

The Role

Every engineer at Hadrian ships software. The speed and quality of that work depends directly on the tools, pipelines, and workflows underneath it. The Builder Tools team owns that foundation.

As a Software Engineer on the Builder Tools team, you will build and maintain the CI/CD infrastructure, internal tooling, and AI-assisted development workflows that every engineering team at Hadrian depends on. Your users are Hadrian's engineers, and your job is to make them faster. That means owning shared pipeline libraries, reducing friction in the SDLC, making internal systems accessible to AI coding agents, and automating the work that slows teams down.

This is a high-leverage role. The systems you build touch every engineer at Hadrian, and the improvements you ship show up immediately in how fast the company moves.

What You'll Do

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipeline libraries that abstract build, release, and deployment events for use across multiple engineering teams
• Design and build internal tools, APIs, and CLI utilities that reduce developer friction and automate recurring engineering tasks — dependency upgrades, credential rotation, routine maintenance
• Help make Hadrian's internal systems API-ready for AI coding agents; build harness tooling, context systems, and feedback loops that improve the quality of AI-generated contributions in our codebase
• Instrument and monitor developer productivity systems; surface bottlenecks and measure the impact of tooling improvements through clear metrics
• Partner with application development teams to identify needs, implement CI/CD best practices, and drive adoption of new tooling across the org
• Join the on-call rotation to support systems and services during production incidents; contribute to root cause analyses and postmortems
• Participate in code reviews and author technical proposals that raise the engineering bar for the Builder Tools team

What We're Looking For

• 5–8 years of software engineering experience, with at least 2–3 years focused on CI/CD, developer tooling, or build infrastructure
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining complex CI/CD pipelines and build infrastructure — pipeline-as-code, artifact management, multi-environment deployments
• Strong programming fundamentals in Go, Python, TypeScript, or similar; track record of writing clean, maintainable, well-tested code
• Experience with Docker and container orchestration (Kubernetes or similar)
• Solid understanding of source control concepts and practical Git experience
• Proven ability to troubleshoot complex systems and resolve issues efficiently
• A developer empathy mindset: you build tools that are easy to adopt, well-documented, and reduce toil rather than create it
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience

What Will Set You Apart

• Genuine curiosity and hands-on experience with AI coding tools and agents — Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar — and opinions about what makes them work well in a real codebase
• Experience building API-ready interfaces or harness tooling for AI coding agents
• Prior work on developer experience or engineering productivity programs
• Familiarity with GitOps principles and workflows
• Experience with static analysis, automated PR pipelines, or code review tooling
• Background in fast-paced or scaling startup environments

Growth & Trajectory

The Builder Tools team is being built from the ground up, and this is one of the foundational IC roles on it. As the team grows and the function matures, there are opportunities to specialize in AI-assisted developer workflows, CI/CD platform ownership, or SDK/API development — and to grow into a senior IC or tech lead role as the org scales.

Compensation

For this role, the target salary range is $120,000- $250,000 (actual range may vary based on experience).

This is the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the range may be modified in the future. An employee's pay position within the salary range will be based on several factors, including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

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 space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., 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.

Hadrian Is An Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the Company's policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. The Company does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race inclusive of traits historically associated with race (including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks and twists), color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, national origin (including, in California, possession of a drivers license), ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, height or weight, medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, exercise of reproductive rights, any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws, or any combination of the above characteristics. 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.