Head of Operations

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, and dispatched in minutes. 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 Head of Operations at American Turbines will own everything that isn't engineering, and make sure none of it slows engineering down. Vendor relationships, purchase orders, supplier qualification, inbound and outbound logistics, the shop floor, the facility, finance ops, recruiting operations, and the operating cadence that holds it all together. This role decides whether the prototype ships in months or quarters.

You will get parts cut. You will find the machinist who can hold the tolerance the design team needs, negotiate the price, expedite the shipment, and have it on the receiving dock when the build engineer asks for it. You will stand up our supplier base from scratch: castings houses, forging shops, instrumentation vendors, superalloy distributors, EDM and additive partners. When a vendor slips, you will fly out and fix it.

You will own the facility. Lease, layout, power, gas, ventilation, EHS, security, badging, test stand site selection, and every piece of capital equipment that comes through the door. You will build the operating cadence the company runs on: weekly build reviews, supplier scorecards, the hiring pipeline tracker, the cash and burn report that goes to investors.

What We're Looking For

Operations experience at a hardware startup that ran fast. Direct hands on supply chain and vendor management for precision machined or cast parts, ideally in aerospace, defense, motorsport, semiconductor capital equipment, or industrial machinery. You have stood up a supplier base before. You have negotiated, expedited, and rejected parts.

This role is in-person, in San Francisco. Remote and hybrid candidates will not be considered.

Compensation

$125,000 - $165,000 base. Generous stock package.