Director of Engineering, Hadrian
Infrastructure
More information about location
Building autonomous factories for aerospace components
Open for applications
Building autonomous factories for aerospace components
101-200 employees
Open for applications
More information about location
101-200 employees
Company mission
To build the planet's most efficient factory to accelerate a democratic, abundant, spacefaring future.
Role
Who you are
- This is a leadership role for someone who has done this before at scale, who is hands-on enough to make the right technical calls, and who can build and retain a high-performing team in a demanding environment
- 10-15+ years in infrastructure or platform engineering, including 5+ years in engineering leadership
- Deep, hands-on expertise in Kubernetes: cluster architecture, scheduling, scaling, and day-2 operations
- Strong foundation in compute, networking, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure (AWS and/or GCP)
- Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform or equivalent)
- Proven track record designing for reliability, redundancy, and failure recovery
- Ability to set technical direction at the company level and operate autonomously
- Experience building and scaling high-performing engineering teams
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent hands-on experience
Desirable
- Deep knowledge of Kubernetes internals, including the control plane and scheduler
- Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd)
- Multi-cluster and multi-region orchestration experience
- Strong understanding of infrastructure security best practices
- Background operating at high scale: multi-region deployments, high-QPS systems, or similarly demanding environments
What the job involves
- Hadrian's infrastructure is not just software backbone. It is the nervous system of a physical factory
- Our infrastructure teams are responsible for operating the software systems that run our manufacturing operations, from Kubernetes-based compute platforms to the systems that keep our factory floor running reliably at scale
- As Director of Engineering, Infrastructure, you will own the platform that everything else runs on. You will lead a team of 12-15 engineers spanning Kubernetes and compute platform engineering, site reliability engineering, and core infrastructure (networking, storage)
- You will report to the VP of Engineering and work closely with our DevOps, Product Engineering, and Security teams to ensure our systems are fast, reliable, and ready to scale globally
- Define and execute Hadrian's infrastructure strategy across compute, networking, and storage
- Architect and scale Kubernetes platforms for multi-region, high-availability workloads
- Own the reliability and performance of core infrastructure systems, establishing SLOs/SLIs and incident response standards
- Drive infrastructure cost optimization and efficiency across cloud and on-prem environments
- Lead and grow a team of 12-15 engineers across platform, SRE, and infrastructure disciplines
- Partner closely with DevOps and Developer Experience teams without owning those functions directly
- Establish clear ownership boundaries between infrastructure and adjacent teams
- Ensure our infrastructure is secure and compliant with relevant regulations
- Drive multi-region and high-availability architecture strategy as we expand to new factory locations
- This role has a clear path as Hadrian expands its factory footprint globally, the scope of this function grows with it. The trajectory from this role leads toward VP of Infrastructure, with expanding ownership over global infrastructure strategy and potential oversight of the SRE organization
Our take
Hadrian is an industrial automation company that creates autonomous factories for aerospace components. Founded by a former history student, the inspiration for Hadrian was the notion that throughout history, empires begin to fall when they outsource their core industries to lower-cost countries, resulting in internal stagnation and mass unemployment.
To counter this historic trend, founder Chris Power founded Hadrian, which uses machine learning to automate the processes of component factories. Power honed in on key US industries that were lacking in scalable solutions. Aerospace and defence is one area in which the USA relies on boutique experts who lack the manpower to build at scale. This factory automation solution addresses bottlenecks in manufacturing aerospace components that slow down progress due to owner-operated machine shops.
With investment from early Facebook and Airbnb investors Andreessen Horowitz, Hadrian is setting a precedent for a new era of machine work innovation. Hadrian’s main challenge will be convincing smaller manufacturers in the sector to embrace the precision and time-saving benefits of automation. With two factories now operational, Hadrian is using funding to continue its team and product growth, so as to meet the growing demand for component manufacturing.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Jul 2025
$260m
SERIES C
Feb 2024
$93.6m
SERIES B
Total funding: $490.6m
Company benefits
- 100% coverage of platinum medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans for employees 401k
- Relocation stipend if you’re moving from outside of LA
- Flexible vacation policy
Company HQ
Hermosa Beach, CA
Leadership
Chris Power
(CEO & CPO)Previously Managing Partner at ADSC, Contributor and Advisor at Open Lunar Foundation and Head of Growth at Ento.com.
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