Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering

Join Hadrian, a cutting-edge aerospace and defense company, as the Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering. In this role, you will lead the Forward Deployed team, oversee technical outcomes, and drive programs from initial conversations to production deployment. You will also build and lead the team, manage executive-level stakeholder relationships, and remain hands-on as programs evolve. This position offers a relocation stipend, comprehensive insurance coverage, a 401k, and a flexible vacation policy.

• Lead the Forward Deployed team across multiple programs, overseeing technical outcomes and ensuring successful delivery of programs from initial conversations to production deployment.
• Serve as the primary technical owner for customer program leadership, government stakeholders, and prime partners, leading technical reviews and driving technical decisions across programs.
• Build and lead the team by hiring and growing engineers, product managers, and designers, setting the standard for how they work and ensuring high-quality delivery.

• 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
• Executive‑level stakeholder management. You have owned executive level customer relationships and made commitments on behalf of a company that you then had to deliver on
• You have a demonstrated history leading engineering and product teams and scaling a product from 0-1
• 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
• Track record of building highly productive teams in ambiguous enviorments
• Highly commercial technical leaders with excellent product judgment
• 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 and your teams run 5x faster
• Hands on technical leader. You are just as comfortable supporting your team with architecture and review as you are taking your own idea from design to delivery
• Founder or member of a "founding-team"
• Experience owning customer relationships and business decisions
• Background in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, or anywhere hardware, software, and operations intersect
• Forward-deployed or solutions leadership at a product company