Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Hadrian Automation · Los Angeles

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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.

Role Summary

The Director, Forward Deployed Engineering leads the technical arm of Hadrian's Customer Programs motion. You sit inside Build Engineering and partner directly with the Customer Programs team, owning the manufacturing scoping of new customer engagements: translating what a customer wants into what Hadrian will actually commit to and build.

This role works directly with customers every day. For many of them, you and your team are the face of Hadrian engineering, so how you show up in the room matters as much as the technical answer. The work starts with discovery. Before anything is proposed, you and your team get inside the customer's operation: observing how work actually flows, mapping their processes and constraints, and interviewing the people closest to the problem until you understand what they need, which is often different from what they first ask for.

From there, you shape a solution that maximizes what the customer gets out of the engagement and builds toward where Hadrian is headed. The craft is steering to the answer where the customer's best outcome and Hadrian's direction reinforce each other: high impact, low effort, and built on what we already do well rather than new obligations we then have to invent our way out of.

The intent behind housing this role in Build Engineering is clean accountability: your team scopes what we commit to, and Build Engineering delivers it. That means the commitments you shape have to be grounded in first-principles engineering judgment and a real understanding of the factory, not optimism. You evaluate and understand before you propose or promise.

Key Responsibilities

• Represent Hadrian with customers day to day: Own the technical relationship with customer engineering, program, and leadership teams. Run working sessions, present findings and recommendations, handle hard questions and pushback in the room, and follow up with clear, accurate written communication. Every interaction should leave the customer more confident in Hadrian.

• Discover before you design: Embed with customers to observe their operations, map processes, constraints, and pain points, and interview stakeholders from the shop floor to program leadership. Build a clear, evidence-based picture of the real need before any solution is on the table.

• Shape the solution: Fold what you learn into a solution that maximizes customer output and moves Hadrian toward what we are building. Hold an accurate picture of current capability and roadmap, and steer each engagement to the point where those two goals reinforce each other, favoring existing capabilities over new obligations.

• Partner with Customer Programs: Operate on a dotted line to Customer Programs as their forward deployed engineering arm, bringing technical judgment into every engagement from first conversation through commitment.

• Lead the forward deployed engineering team: Build, manage, and develop a technical team that engages directly with customers during new program scoping. Set the standard for how the team runs discovery, evaluates opportunities, and communicates with customers in a technical, credible, low-ego way.

• Scope new customer engagements: Own the manufacturing scoping of new engagements: review requirements, drawings, specifications, tolerances, materials, and volumes, and define a manufacturing solution that Hadrian can commit to with confidence.

• Evaluate before you promise: Bring a first-principles engineering mindset to every engagement. Understand the problem and the constraints before proposing or committing to a solution, so that what we sign up for is real and deliverable.

• Hand off cleanly to Build Engineering: Ensure every commitment is scoped so that the Build Engineering organization can deliver it: clear product definition, make-vs-buy posture, process capability requirements, and a manufacturing plan that stands up to execution.

• Drive leverage, not one-offs: Recognize recurring customer patterns and turn them into repeatable scoping approaches and reusable solution templates, so the function scales with the business instead of scaling headcount linearly.
  

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Manufacturing, or a related engineering field and 8+ years of manufacturing or manufacturing engineering experience, or 12+ years of that experience without a degree.

• 3+ years managing technical teams (direct reports).

• Experience in a customer-facing technical role (e.g., applications, field or sales engineering, program engineering, or consulting), including presenting technical recommendations to customer engineering and program leadership.

• Proven ability to lead a technical team in a customer-facing capacity, translating between customer requirements and manufacturing reality.

• Demonstrated ability to run structured customer discovery (site visits, process mapping, stakeholder interviews) and turn it into a defined technical solution.

• Strong first-principles engineering judgment: able to evaluate and understand complex requirements before proposing or committing to solutions.

• Fluency reading and interpreting engineering drawings, specifications, GD&T, and manufacturing process requirements.

• Experience scoping or defining manufacturing work: DFM, make-vs-buy, process planning, tooling strategy, or production launch.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in aerospace, defense, maritime, or other high-complexity, high-mix manufacturing environments.

• Background spanning both a scaling/startup environment and a mature manufacturing organization.

• Exposure to precision machining, castings, forgings, sheet metal, or additive processes across metals and composites.

• Experience working alongside sales, program management, or commercial teams on new customer engagements.

• Exposure to manufacturing software and automation (MES/ERP, CAM automation, robotics, factory data systems), with a track record of feeding what you learn from customers back into product and automation roadmaps so those capabilities get built ahead of demand.

• A track record of building repeatable systems and templates rather than solving each problem from scratch.

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.

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